Puppies Redux: AU 301 Enemy of My Enemy
by Jedi's Pal
Summary: This is a REPOSTING from our shipper wish fulfilment series that changes up the Season Four premiere starting with S2 E11 Hot Spot. This is a REPOSTING of "Puppies, Kittens and Gun Toting Babies" (Chapters 13-16 ) and "Reconnecting" (Chapters 5, 8 & 20), combining together those T and M rated stories so it can be read in one comprehensive continuous storyline for the 3.01 AU
1. Chapter 1

_**A/N:**_ _Thank you for your reviews of AU 4.01 "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling." We have to admit that one is one of our favorites too. We appreciate everyone's continued enthusiasm for our reposting these as one continuous story._

 _We're working on the next chapter of "Be Brave Little Angel," but first will be the n_ _ext installment of the current 2.01 AU story for "Reconnecting" and an_ _update to "True Believer" in time for the fourth anniversary of the end of Burn Notice._

 _This is a REPOST of Chapters 13-16 of_ _ **Puppies, Kittens & Gun Toting Babies**_ _and Chapters 5, 8 & 20 of __**Reconnecting**_ _. After all the intense action of the 4.01 and 5.01 reboots, this story was our attempt at more angst and romance._

 _Our story opens immediately following the events of 2.11 Hot Spot; however, when Michael returns with breakfast and finds Fiona gone, it's not because she left without a word (wonder where she learned that from!) and everything changes…_

 _()()()()()()_

 **3.01 – The Enemy of My Enemy**

 _An alternate for Season Three and beyond following on from_ _2.11 – Hot Spot_

 _()()()()()()_

 _Miami 2009_

She'd been aware enough to know he'd said something to her and far too comfortable to do anything more than hum an affirmative, though she had no idea what she'd just agreed to, and go back to sleep.

She was a notorious light sleeper and, after being awakened repeatedly last night, she was actually tired and happy to have the bed to herself for a moment to snuggle down and get some real rest. He was puttering around the kitchen area in his pajama bottoms when she closed her eyes and let herself go.

She hadn't shared a bed with Michael regularly since Dublin and sleeping with him in the more literal meaning of the phrase was something she couldn't adjust to immediately. Sure, she had slept with him in the colloquial sense since she'd been in Miami, but that had been sadly few and far between enough that there had been only one occasion that had ended up with them back to back like in their Belfast days and a pistol under each pillow… _until Jason Bly had interrupted their not so comfortable slumber._

So when she'd woken up to the sound of an unfamiliar car engine and, worse yet, that oh so particular sound machine pistols make when they're being made ready, Fiona had grabbed the pajama top laying conveniently on the ugly green chair next to the bed and thrown it on as she rushed to the window.

But instead of an annoying CSS agent, Michael's new handler and a couple of her heavily armed minions had made their way out of the long, black stretch limo that was now backing out of the parking area below the loft. After dispatching her security force in opposite directions, Carla began to ascend the metal stairs.

Ms Glenanne took a moment too long trying to decide between picking a hiding place and simply blowing Carla's head off the minute she walked through the door. She spent another minute too long trying to decide on a hiding place such that she'd left herself no time to retrieve anything but her handbag as she fled up the staircase, onto the upper railing and out through the skylight, setting the covering back in place not a second too soon as she heard the heavy door squeaking all the way up there.

She did a quick perimeter check of the grounds from atop the roof and located Carla's body guards on the opposite corners of the building. Fiona debated going over the far corner and down the escape ladder she had thoughtfully provided for Michael's use. She really _was_ better at tactical analysis than he was…

He might have been bred to it, with all his military and spy craft training, _but she was_ _born to it._

But knowing what she did about the people who had burned Mr Westen, Carla was probably just here to deliver a message wrapped in a few not so subtle threats and then she'd be on her way. The unknown was where the hell Michael had gone and how long it would take him to get back. While the Irishwoman had zero desire to climb down the side of the decrepit warehouse and the surrounding environs barefoot, wearing just his PJ top and frown, she had even less desire to spend hours up on the roof waiting for the ex-spy to put in an appearance, though she highly doubted Ms. Thing would wait that long either.

She reached for her cell phone to call him when she remembered how this had all happened in the first place. _Dammit!_ Her frustration with the situation mounted as she realized that, while she could probably make the shot and kill the one lookout, the gunfire might draw the other into a position where she wouldn't be able to get a clean shot and they had far more bullets than she had. She ground her teeth as Michael's voice and, worse yet, the voice of Sam Axe echoed in her head counseling patience and observation.

She moved back to the skylight in time to discern that Carla was headed for the bathroom, whether to avail herself of the facilities or just be a nosy bitch, it didn't matter. She was going to find Fiona's formerly wet shirt hanging on the shower curtain rod alongside with Michael's T-shirt, their jeans laid side by side on the rim of the tub and the mere thought of _where her thong was_ …. Fiona locked her teeth together and breathed out through her nostrils harshly to keep from capping Carla and consequences be damned.

 _Tis abou' time someone taught these bastids who thar fecking with!_

Her intended target came back into view immediately below the skylight opening at the foot of the interior staircase and pulled out the cell phone she had apparently had concealed under her flowing top.

"Stay alert," the blonde ordered. "Fiona Glenanne could show up at any time or they could be together."

Momentarily mollified that her reputation had been properly respected, the lithe woman crouched low and eased the skylight open a bit more so she could hear better what was going on inside.

"Are you positive she's not with him?"

The roar of the Charger's engine confirmed what Carla had just unwittingly told her: Michael had returned.

Fiona debated another moment if she should try to warn Mr Westen of what awaited him inside, but decided that the tactical advantage of not potentially revealing her position outweighed any benefit of tipping him off. He'd find out soon enough that his handler was there and what the hell _she_ wanted.

 _Fiona_ wanted Michael to appreciate the full outrage that Carla had committed by letting herself in.

She peered through the thick, dirty glass and she could see by the set of the woman's shoulders and general body language that Michael was not telling her what she wanted to hear. Their voices were too low for the former guerilla to tell what they were saying exactly, but her lip reading was pretty good, as was her ability to read her former lover.

That thought stopped her… _former_ lover… that was what he had been yesterday, but that was _not_ what it had felt like last night… or again early this morning when their resting close together, as it was not actually sleeping for her, had sparked some friction between his manhood and her backside that resulted in them doing more than spooning as they had laid side by side, his hands attending those parts that weren't pressed up against his body. She shook her head forcefully, dislodging the distraction.

As she looked on from the roof to the room below, she saw the blonde turn and sweep out of the loft, frustration and anger clear on her face. _Good!_ That would teach his handler not to show up where she was unwanted and unwelcome. It was a habit that might prove fatal for Carla if Fiona had anything to say.

()()()()()()()()

"Give me the list, Michael. It's time you focused on helping yourself or you're not going to be around to help anybody else."

Michael stared at her retreating back. That Carla had bosses, he knew. That Carla was afraid of them, he had guessed, and she had now confirmed his suspicions. But there was a woman more important on his mind, the woman he'd left sleeping in his bed, the woman he'd gone out and got breakfast for.

As the woman he wasn't interested in closed the loft door behind her, Mr Westen pulled out his cell phone, as his eyes drifted to the empty bed and the empty chair beside it, and dialed her number.

" _This is Fi, leave a message."_

 _Of course_ … what had made him think she would have replaced that cell phone already?

So where was she? Had Carla done something to her? Or had she decided that last night was a mistake?

Before Michael could go too far down the path of paranoia, a loud noise directed his attention upwards.

"Give us hand, will ya?" Fiona called down through the open skylight.

He couldn't help the smile that spread over his face at the sight of her: not dead, not gone, not hurt or in trouble and wearing the top to the pajama set his mother had gotten him for Christmas. He had hoped when he'd laid it on the chair after slipping into the bottom half of the set that she might be persuaded to make use of the top.

Michael put down the cell and jogged up the stairs just in time to position himself next to couch, enjoying the view as it were, when she swung her legs one at a time over the edge of the corroded metal that made up the framework for the skylight. Another forceful reminder of what he'd been missing….

Fiona flashed him once more as she hung by her hands momentarily, sending a shiver of desire through him, before dropping towards the sofa and landing in his lap as her momentum knocked them both down.

"I'm warning you, Michael, the next time someone breaks in while I'm sleeping here, I'm going to just shoot first and bury the evidence later!" she declared, sitting up and attempting to untangle their limbs.

He grinned back at her, "Maybe I'll let you… next time you're sleeping here."

She blinked at him as he let the statement hang in the air between them before he dropped his head slightly to kiss her on the forehead tenderly and give her a gentle squeeze of a hug.

"Did you hit your head when I fell on you?"

He shook his head and chuckled lightly. "Come on," he urged. "Your breakfast is getting cold."

"You brought me breakfast?" She blinked again and shinnied off his lap, giving him another view of what she was not wearing underneath the pajama top.

"I wanted to surprise you…" Michael said mildly, pushing himself off the couch, meeting her wide eyed stare with a subtle smile.

There was another pregnant pause as they gazed at one another, each trying to read the others' mind while thoughts of him pinning her to the couch and adding another memory, was apparently in both their heads, Then the petite woman turned and began to descend the interior metal stairs.

"I'm surprised," she agreed as she walked past the rumpled bed with a shiver of her own running down her spine toward the bar where the enticing scent of something good made her stomach rumble low.

Their _'morning after'_ meals had been a thing of the past ever since he'd been forcibly resettled in South Florida, primarily because they weren't together anymore. But even during that brief period they _had been_ _reconnecting_ right before he ran off to face down Philip Cowan, he hadn't cooked for her unless he wanted something; Michael was so cash poor so often since coming to Miami that she often paid the tab.

"Spanish omelet?" she guessed as she liberated the Styrofoam carton from the plastic takeout bag.

"Egg white only," he confirmed and the look on his face said he remembered all those morning after breakfasts back in Dublin as well as she did, where breakfast in bed had led to more time spent there.

They had come together a number of times over the years since he'd left her Dublin; sometimes it had ended quite badly and other times glorious, but they always parted again, The only reason he'd brought her this, her favorite breakfast, after their first night together in Miami- after he'd blown her off and then followed her to Benny's Place to apologize, that is- was because he had thought she wouldn't be staying at the time. He'd been quite surprised to find her waiting for him at the loft, Sam Axe even more so…

"Hmmmm," she purred as she sipped the tea in the cardboard cup. The food looked as wonderful as it smelled and the drink was Irish Breakfast blend, a recent favorite in the US. She couldn't help but answer his smile as she noticed he was eating a whole egg version of her omelet instead of a cup of yogurt.

It made Fiona want to demand to know who _he was_ and what had he done with Michael Westen.

"Nice color on you," he remarked with a smirk. "I thought maybe you could get a little use out of it."

The top was a garish shade of green that Michael would not have worn on pain of death, but he had succeeded changing the color of the bottoms enough through repeated washing with his "stealth suits," as Fiona liked to call the military issue clothing he used for night operations, that they were acceptable.

"I was wondering how Carla knew you'd spent the night. I'm guessing you didn't give her a guided tour."

"She was making herself at home… even used the bathroom apparently…" Fiona informed him between bites. "Seriously, Michael, I don't know why you don't just shoot her and be done with it."

"Well, for one, I'm even less enthusiastic about her potential replacement," he replied after taking a long sip of his drink. "And I really don't want to give them the idea that _just shooting_ is a good problem sol –"

"It's always worked well for me," she interrupted him. "Having a reputation can be very useful."

"It hasn't worked out so well for me lately," the ex-spy countered quietly and then became very interested in sectioning his eggs into precise little squares. Finally, as blue eyes met blue green ones, he seemed to be struggling with a decision. It was so unlike Michael, it made her observe him even more carefully.

"You know, Fi, if… ah…if you want to talk about what happened the last night…"

 _Well, thot wa' tha last thing I expected ta hear._ The Irishwoman watched him warily before answering.

"Are you sure _you_ want to talk about what happened last night?"

He reached out towards the fingers that were not holding her fork, his larger hand covering hers completely. His touch felt like fire to Fiona and irony was not lost on her. "What's wrong, Michael?"

"I- I thought I lost you..."

"I came back," she replied, echoing their conversation from months ago when she had let him know that she wasn't going to be second best in his life anymore. They would work together, but they couldn't be together anymore. She had tired of having him hurt her heart and soul, but being with someone else had been met with limited success for reasons that mostly had to do with the man seated across from her.

"Yes, yes you did." His head dropped and his lips disappeared as he chewed on them for a moment while he composed himself. Then he spoke slowly, staring at his food and refusing to meet her gaze.

"I just wanted to say I …shouldn't have dismissed your… concerns the way I did that day, I'm sorry."

When he finally looked up at her, that expression on his face that said _everything is okay regardless of the circumstances_ was firmly back in place again.

Fiona for her part was staring and speechless. She finally licked her suddenly dry lips and reached for her tea cup. "Thank you for saying so, Michael."

He smiled and nodded, apparently considering the matter closed. "Shall we go look for our bomber?"

"You promised me that he was going to suffer…" She gave him that mischievous grin that usually meant trouble for him and everyone involved.

"Not too much, Fi. I need to know what this guy knows."

She huffed, annoyed now. "You know, Michael, if we looked for everyone who tried to kill you, we'd do nothing else. You're working for the people that burned you, for heaven's sake, for the people that show up unannounced, rummage through your home and meddle in your private—"

She stopped herself with no small amount of effort and then let out a long sigh. Yes, it reminded her all too much of the liberties the British Army had taken during her childhood. She decided she should be more sympathetic to his plight. He hadn't asked for this either.

"Well, if there's anyone who can track down a bomber, it's our old friend Seymour," she suggested.

"Hope he's still not mad about the face full of gun powder from the last time we dropped by."

"Well…" she drew the word out to several long syllables. "He _was_ pretty enchanted with you once upon a time." She stood up, having finished her food, and deposited the carton into the waste bin under the sink. Fiona paused a moment and ran her hand over the top of the cabinet door, remembering helping him replace them _after he had almost gotten garroted… when he had gotten her a Soviet pistol …_

"Pretty enchanted with me…?" Michael continued, oblivious to her reverie as she was standing behind him at the moment, "Yea, he showed it when he attacked me with a baseball bat."

 _When she had seduced him on the floor where she was standing right now…._ Fiona forcibly refocused.

"Well, if we're going back to Seymour's, I need to change and then go home so I can change again," she announced. The petite woman wrapped her arms around his waist from behind and hugged him tightly, laying a kiss on the back of his neck. "Thank you for breakfast…."

"You're welcome." He stood up as she released him and stepped back, but Michael invaded her personal space again almost immediately and raised one calloused hand to cup her cheek.

"We should get you a new cell phone while we're out."

He leaned in slowly, clearly telegraphing his intentions, waiting for her to object. _She_ had told _him_ it was over, _she_ had tried to move on with life, although he had made it abundantly clear that he agreed to it.

Their lips met and he kept the kiss light but sweet before pulling back to kiss her on the forehead again.

"You get changed," he told her. "I'll go bring your car up front. You left it in the usual place, right?"

Fiona nodded numbly as the dark haired man smiled brightly and fished the keys to the Saab out of her purse and then disappeared out the door.

()()()()()()()()()()

There was a weird energy every time he and Fiona were in the same room. That's what Sam had called it. They had all noticed, but Mr Axe was the one who was truly made uncomfortable by it. As they were driving away from Seymour's house, and the unfortunate Mr. Poole who would shortly be on his way to Suriname that same charged atmosphere was filling the Charger and Michael was grateful to be driving.

 _Seymour had not only noticed it, but he had commented on it…frequently._

Michael was truly grateful they hadn't seen much of his mother while working on this current case. No doubt Madeline Westen's maternal radar would have gone into overdrive and that was something he just couldn't cope with right now. He was having enough trouble dealing Sam, Seymour and… _Fiona._

He glanced over at the petite woman who'd dominated his dreams for over a decade, as she sat in the passenger seat, turning over the throwing dagger Seymour had made for them and repeated running her thumb over the engraved symbol on the handle that was supposed to mean _'destiny.'_

As a young man, Michael had considered being an Army Ranger his destiny and pursued it with relentless drive. As a spy, he had been successful in avoiding what Larry Sizemore had considered to be his destiny, albeit with some help. Destinies could be pursued or cheated, depending on whether it was good or bad. He'd accomplished what he'd set out to do, he'd overcome what Larry had tried to do. Michael had been pretty confident he could handle whatever destiny sent in his chosen life as a spy.

Until Fiona Glenanne had shattered all the barriers between personal and professional relationships, that is. He'd told her over and over by his words and his actions that there was no future for them together and yet here she was by his side, helping him against her often expressed better judgment.

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye now, wondering why she stuck by him like she did.

She had arranged for Seymour's help. She had gotten him the gig that was going to pay for the cash that he needed to spread around to get the intel on the man who'd tried to blow him up, though she informed him she expected a commission. She had even agreed to help him with the job itself without an additional fee once she learned that the man who had tried to hire her for a corporate espionage job had actually murdered the receptionist's father. It would be her pleasure to help Chandler take a fall.

But they had also "helped" each other out of their clothes and into their bathing suits before they had gone to Seymour's. He was actually thankful when she'd put the sarong over her hips, regardless of how overdressed she felt with it on, because it was way less distracting that just her bikini had been.

When Sam had made a crack about them grabbing dinner, the retired Navy man had implied that that they would be _grabbing_ more than dinner. Michael had played it cool because there was no way he was going to admit that Mr Axe was right on target with his assessment. Both times they had been together since that first night after the fire, Michael had played it cool with Fiona as well.

He was extremely aware that while she had been the one to tell him it was over this time, he had been the one to abandon her in Dublin, mislead her in Berlin and reject her assistance and support when he'd gone off to pursue the people that had burned him. All of this, which he'd compartmentalized into manageable boxes, had come spilling out when he'd gotten a brutal reminder of what it felt like to think someone you… cared about very deeply had been ripped out of your life.

While he was completely bad and admittedly so at processing these feelings into meaningful action, he was a master spy and he knew how to act as though the other party was in charge while letting them know that he was interested and acting on that interest. He just hadn't realized how much he'd been doing it around Fiona until they had _both_ called him on it.

" _As stimulating as all this is, I still don't see why you called me over here, Michael."_

She'd been rolling around his bed wearing a beige mini dress than left nearly nothing to the imagination.

Mike had shrugged and smiled. His tone said it all apparently. _"It always helps to bounce ideas, Fi."_

Suddenly Sam couldn't wait to leave the room _. "Uh…. I'm gonna grab another beer,"_ which he had _. "And … uh… drink it on the balcony,"_ the ex-SEAL had beat a retreat in double time.

" _Is there something you want to say to me, Michael? Is this about the 'debriefing' the other night?_

" _Is it so strange that I would want your opinion on a job?"_

" _Look me in the eye and tell that's all this is,"_ she had challenged with a sparkle in those blue green eyes and a smirk on her lips.

" _I have to go see Chandler,"_ he had decided suddenly, lest something else happen _._

Oh, yeah… they were driving Sam crazy and it hadn't take Mr Axe long to put the pieces together as Michael had been lining his friend up to help him with the next phase of the operation to see that the murdering, thieving art dealer got what he deserved. They needed to plant a bug on Orr's cell phone, who was Chandlers wet work guy. But he couldn't let himself be seen, so Mr Westen needed his team.

" _Hey, uh, speaking of Fi, what was that whole business at the loft? You know, with the weird energy?"_

He had shrugged and sipped his iced tea. There had been no way he was going to answer or look at Sam.

" _Oh, no, Mike, tell me you didn't!"_ Sam never was thrilled about him getting back with Fiona the first time, as much as he'd tried to keep that under wraps _. "You did, didn't you? You did!"_

 _Okay, let's go with wasn't-paying-attention-what-did-you-say…._

" _What? No, I don't know what you're talking about," and now feigned innocence. "What?"_

Mr Axe wasn't buying it. They'd served together and Sam'd known him too long and too well to sell that.

" _How many times do you have to touch the flame until you figure out that it burns?"_

 _Uh….flames….bad analogy, Sam, really bad analogy…_

" _You gonna help with the job or not_?" Michael had pretended to study the papers before him _._

" _Of course, but I object to the fact that you wanted me to work with her without telling me that you were doing a little booty call!"_

That was all it took.

" _Check!"_

"So what are you thinking about so hard? How to turn Poole's account number into a name?" Fiona queried, her voice shattering the silence and disrupting his reminiscing.

He looked at her, startled as he realized that is what he _would have been_ thinking about any other time.

"Just something Sam said… you know, good ol' Sam…"

That brought a sly smile to her lips. "Yea, good ol' Sam…" Fiona had gotten an earful from Mr Axe about them renewing their relationship in the biblical sense while they were staking out the hotel bar and keeping tabs of Mr. Orr before she'd had the less than pleasant task of trying to seduce him.

" _Planting a bug in a cell phone? You think I can't get a guy to go up to his room?"_

" _No, I'd say you have a gift for getting men to make bad choices," Sam_ had snarked with just a touch of self-righteousness.

 _"Michael told you..."_ _That had really pissed her off. It was none of Sam's damned business. On the other hand, she had been more curious about what Michael had said about it until Sam had shot her down._

" _He didn't have to."_

" _Well, don't look at me. He started it."_

She looked at the blade in her hand again… _well balanced, incredibly sharp and personally engraved._ Mr Talbot's opinion had been the complete opposite of Mr Axe's as far as them pursuing a relationship…

They had been sitting in the Charger, the South Florida based gunrunner in the back seat and the Irish one in the driver's seat, while Michael went to do his spy stuff.

" _That guy, it's like he sees around corners… so what's up with you two? Not together anymore…?"_

 _Were they together? It had been a very good question and it cut to the heart … her heart actually…but also to the heart of the matter. Just because they had been sleeping together in all senses of that word, did it mean they were together, that they were a 'couple?'_ She had made the mistake of assuming that they were multiple times in their relationship, only to be crushed repeatedly as Michael focused his attention on his responsibilities to his country and the Company and _then_ used that same laser like precision to try to _get back in_ with the same bastards that had thrown him out into the cold.

So, as much as she enjoyed Michael pursuing her, two things stuck out clearly in her mind. He could change _his_ mind at any time, as the shock of what had happened faded into the past for one. For another, until he succeeded in his quest to get out from under the people who burned him, they weren't really free to pursue any kind of permanent relationship. Of course, even if he did get free of them, there was no guarantee that he would want to be with her instead of trying to get his old job back again.

" _We're in different spaces, Seymour."_

" _Different spaces? Gimme a break. As a practitioner of Tai Chi, lemme tell ya something, missy, go with the flow of the universe, alright? It's destiny, you two… forces bigger than us. Don't argue with destiny. It will kick your ass. Believe me."_

" _I'll keep that in mind, Seymour"_

She looked at Michael's profile, as he had suddenly gotten really interested in his driving, and remembered when they'd been driving that BMW back from the junkyard and the impromptu fireworks display he'd put on for her and the stars she'd made him see whilst he was driving with just her mouth.

 _Tempting… but she was going to let him lead this time and see where it led…._

She stroked her thumb over the engraving again. The Irish Catholic part of her believed in destiny, in things bigger than herself. The practical gunrunner part of her believed that your fate was what you made it with a well-chosen weapon and a block of C-4. The woman's heart that she frequently denied she possessed wanted to believe there was a happy ending for them; however, she'd been hurt by him and by life enough times that she was afraid to believe it, but moving on had not worked well for her thus far.

"We're here," he announced as he put the Charger into park on the street in front of her condo.

"So we are…" she agreed. "That was fun."

He flashed his teeth in the darkness. "You have interesting ideas about what's fun."

"I have interesting ideas about a lot of things," she purred. "Care to come in? Unless you need to go do something else, maybe take care of something and then go to bed?"

It took him a minute, but then the words echoed in his head. He'd told her violence was foreplay for her and not for him right before he'd blown her off. It had been a damned lie, but he'd taken the first excuse he could think of to push her away. As he sat there with her, their black clothing standing out on the white leather seats, he wondered now what he had been so afraid of then….

"Maybe _we_ can take care of something and then go to bed?" Michael smiled softly as he spoke.

"I don' know, I told ya I'd have to shoot the next person that wakes me up in the morning."

Michael reached out, tangling his fingers in her long auburn locks as he pulled her in for a long, soft kiss.

"Then I'll make sure I don't wake you up until you're ready for breakfast," he offered as their lips parted.

"Until Carla decides to show up," she pouted.

"If Carla shows up at _your_ place, _I'll_ shoot her for you."

"That's a deal," she sighed as she leaned in for another sweet slow kiss.

And no one woke them up in the morning and no one was shot.

 _Much to Fiona's disappointment…_


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** _This is the second part of the 3.01 premiere AU that was originally posted as Chapter 14 in "Puppies, Kittens and Gun Toting Babies."_

 _()()()()()()_

 **3.01 – The Enemy of My Enemy – Part 2**

 _An alternate for Season Three and beyond following on from_ _2.11 – Hot Spot_

 _()()()()()()_

 _Miami 2009_

The beginning of the week had started well enough. He'd had an account number and, as soon as breakfast was over, Barry would be tasked with turning it into a name for him. He'd woken up wrapped up in Fiona's prized Hungarian goose down duvet and the woman herself. Almost magically, there had been no phone calls, no interruptions and no reason to get out of bed since the spiky haired money launderer was never up much before the crack of noon. The air conditioning, something he hadn't experienced much of while sleeping since he'd been unceremoniously dumped in Miami, along with the thick covers and the warm body snuggled against his, had made it easy to lie still on his back and pretend he was McBride again, wondering when thoughts of then had started to come back so often.

 _He'd felt her stir and resisted the temptation to lean in and press kisses onto her hair. He'd learned the hard way a long time ago back in Ireland what happened when Fiona Glenanne was startled awake._

" _Hey…" she'd said, her voice made soft by her sleepiness._

" _Hey yourself," he'd returned with a smile, turning his head to lay a light touch of his lips to her forehead before returning his gaze to the ceiling. He'd been with her in this bed once before this, but never had he spent the night and awakened in her apartment. "Are you ready for breakfast?"_

" _Maybe…" her voice had drifted up to his ears and then she'd begun to peppering kisses along his jawline, "But I may be too sleepy wake up properly…" Fiona had paused and then had yawned hugely. "I might have ta shoot ya if ya try ta get outta me bed…"_

" _Well, we wouldn't want that," he'd agreed, rolling onto his side and gathering her into his arms, kissing her forehead once more before moving on to that sweet spot where her neck met her shoulder. Morning after sex had always followed one rule: no mouth to mouth contact until teeth met toothbrush._

 _It still left a lot of room for fun things to do._

He'd eventually made it out of her bed, out of her bathroom, out of her kitchen and finally out of her place altogether as he had headed off to see Barry. Several days had gone by after that, during which he'd had another couple of meals, one of which had actually involved food, and another _encounter_ at her luxury abode on the Intracoastal, and then he'd finally received the phone call from Mr. Burkowski.

As Fiona's tolerance for money launderers' in general and Barry in particular was low, there had been no fireworks when he had called Sam to accompany him instead to the meeting at the Chadwick.

There had almost been fireworks of an entirely different sort after the meeting had gone south and a certain counter intelligence agent had shown up offering to do some counter blackmailing in order to obtain the file Michael had been holding over his head since last year.

" _So, pull the trigger." Fiona had tendered her preferred solution to life's little problems as she'd snatched the pile of singles from him while he'd been taking too long in calculating the tip. "There's enough in that file to reduce Bly's career to a smoldering crater," she'd concluded as she'd put the proper amount of money down on the table for their meal at Carlito's, lunch at the hotel eatery having gone very badly._

" _He can link me to Barry and Barry's broken a law library's worth of financial regulations looking into this account number. If Bly goes after me with that, I can throw the rest of my life into that crater too."_

But the CSS agent had gone after him with more than that and, as lunchtime had turned into later-that-afternoon, things had gone decidedly downhill when they'd arrived back at the loft to find people shredding his favorite chair and scouring his living space for non-existent toxic mold.

" _I'm sorry… for your own safety," the government hack in the face mask and medical gloves had said right before making the mistake of trying to touch Fiona._

" _Don't touch me—for your own safety," had been her rejoinder and Michael remembered thinking at the time for just a brief moment how nice it had been that he'd been allowed to touch her again… frequently._

But that pleasantry had fled this brain the instant the real reason for his current problem had shown up.

" _According to the Board of Health, this loft is unfit for human habitation and here I thought it was just a dump. Fiona Glenanne..." Jason Bly had looked her up and down and smirked prior to adding, "You're wearing more clothes than usual."_

Looking back about it now, Mr Westen knew he would have enjoyed seeing Fiona knock the smartass on his ass. But he had stopped her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and hugging her close to his body, and while his mind had been focused on what the CSS agent had been threatening him with, another part of him had been thoroughly enjoying the feel of the petite redhead pressed against him.

And the juxtaposition of _those_ ideas alone had been reason enough to go to his mother's house instead of Fiona's. That and the consideration of the chaos that would ensue should Bly be stupid enough to try to redecorate the Irishwoman's apartment as opposed to having another go at his childhood home.

So as he had walked towards the rendezvous with Barry, Sam and Fiona in that order, he'd still been a little stiff from the night spent on his mom's couch. Well, actually, he couldn't blame it all on the couch. He'd had a long day saving Jason Bly and a dozen or so hostages from a bank heist the afternoon before.

A meal of Cuban takeout (not his favorite thing, but he'd already made his mom happy for a change by agreeing to stay for dinner, so why argue at that point?) along with the exertion of the day had left him passed out in his mother's living room. The sense of déjà vu that'd washed over him when Michael had awakened to her beaming smile as she'd offered him almost burnt toast and black coffee, the traditional breakfast in the Westen household once he'd gotten into high school, had actually not been unpleasant.

Too bad he couldn't have said the same for his time trying to referee between Sam and Fiona at lunch.

" _Oh, Mike, back me up," his buddy had requested as soon as he'd sat down. "I think it's pretty clear my tactical maneuverings pretty much saved the day here." Sam had been extremely pleased with himself._

" _You feeling underappreciated?" Mr Westen had concluded._

" _Oh, no, he appreciates himself plenty," Fiona had announced, chomping the celery from her Bloody Mary. "He's been insufferable ever since you called him first yesterday," and there had been a hint of betrayal in her eyes… or perhaps it had been only his imagination. However, once Sam had compared the tiny but dangerous woman to a very intelligent monkey, Michael had felt compelled to interrupt._

" _Sam, for your information, I called Fi first," he'd advised the ex-SEAL. Then, turning to the former guerilla, he'd let her know what had happened, "You didn't pick up, which is why I called Sam."_

They'd stared at each other then, that _weird energy_ crackling between them and suddenly pervading the surrounding environs, so much so it had sent Sam in search of another place to drink his beer. After he'd excused himself to go flirt with the nearest waitress, Fiona's pique had turned into something else.

" _So, you're going to go give Bly his life back?" she had asked, dipping the celery stalk and then slowly sucking the vodka infused tomato juice off of it, a hint of a smirk in her 'sweet and innocent' look._

" _He's been feeling more cooperative lately. I think the name of the banker in exchange for a career ending blackmail file seemed fair."_

" _Well, then, I'll leave you to it," she had declared. "Won't do much for all this goodwill you two have with one another now if I shoot him in his other arm," Fiona had sighed and then added, "I would have liked to have seen that." Her smile was seductive. "Maybe later, when he's gone, you can tell me all about it?"_

" _Maybe we can discuss it after dinner later?"_

And they had done more than discuss the particulars of what had transpired with Jason Bly and Michael's mom in the last forty eight hours… far more… The fact that he'd brought a change of clothes with him when he'd gone to pick her up to go out hadn't resonated with him until she'd said something.

" _Oh, planning on spending the night?" she'd purred as he'd hung the button down shirt and slacks in her front hall closet. "You think just because you're buying me dinner you can get into me knickers?"_

" _Just a precaution in case this meeting doesn't go well…" he lied smoothly. It had been then he'd informed her he would be meeting a cut out in the restroom of the restaurant to collect the cash. Barry was still out of town recovering from his encounter with the man from counter surveillance services._

 _She'd pouted, but then grinned broadly as she'd rubbed her body up against his and whispered low in his ear, "Well, maybe I won't wear me underwear to dinner then, if that's all you're about, Mr. Westen."_

Remembering that brought a silly smile to her lover's face as the dark haired man watched her drop the fluffy white towel onto the bed. The body hugging midnight blue dress she had been wearing last night had left little to the imagination. He took a moment to openly admire the tan skin covering her well–toned limbs before she shinnied into a form fitting pair of denim shorts and loose tank top. He took another moment to decide that he still, for various reasons, preferred making love to her in the old porcelain tub back at the loft instead of her shower enclosure. _Her bed,_ on the other hand, truly had its advantages.

Waking up at her place, in air conditioned comfort, surrounded by soft bedding, the warmth of her body reminding his of the prior night's coital bliss, was getting to be a habit he was fast becoming addicted to and that thought sent a pang of guilt to his heart and a shiver of fear up his spine while he rolled up the sleeves of his white pin stripe shirt.

Fiona deserved better than the small moments of his time he gave her in between trying to get out from under the people who burned him. But that was all he had to give to right now and his lover had seemed willing to be content with what they had, whatever it was… for the moment….

They had always worked well professionally and now that they seemed to be working well personally, a small part of his brain wondered where this was leading once he'd found out who'd tried to kill him. He pushed the musing back into its box and chuckled softly as the petite Irishwoman reached up, taking the blow dryer and a soft brush to his wet hair as she'd done so many times back in the day in Dublin after she had finished drying her own auburn locks and securing them in a ponytail.

Fiona's contentment had not survived the stroll on the board walk towards the rendezvous with his mysterious banker. Something about him walking unarmed into the unknown perturbed her it seemed.

"I still can't believe you're giving all this money to some sleazy bank manager," she protested as she snatched the cash from his hand and began to count it out.

"I went— we went to a lot of trouble to find this guy," he amended. "I don't have a lot of options here."

"Michael, he hid money for a man who tried to assassinate you. "

"Which makes him a good person to know if I'm trying to find that assassin," Mr Westen reasoned.

"And you're going to this meeting unarmed with no information and I'm staying behind because…?"

The ex-spy shrugged and continued his brisk pace towards his destination. "It's a tactical risk, Fi. I was warned not to meet you the first time." His toothy grin was warm and sincere despite the situation.

"Yeah!" _Finally, he was getting it_. Though they had been dating at the time, him wooing his mate Sean's sister, the first time Michael McBride wannabe RIRA member had come in contact with Fiona Glenanne, PIRA undercover operative, he'd nearly been crippled. "I almost blew off your hand with a block of C-4."

"And I made a _friend_ ," he replied, putting special emphasis on the word. Michael smiled broader and then shocked Fiona by giving her shoulder a quick squeeze. Mr Westen _did not do_ public displays of affection, especially if he had spy business on the brain. "Maybe I'll make another one."

"Aye and mabbe he'll make a corpse outta ya instead," she groused under her breath, though not out of his exceptional hearing range.

"Watch my back," the dark haired man called over his shoulder as he jogged away.

()()()()()

Patrick Glenanne's eldest daughter had been helping to stitch up her older brothers' and her own wounds since she had been old enough to sew. She'd seen it all, gunshot wounds, flash powder burns, broken bones, dislocated limbs, missing body parts and injuries that could be cause by all forms of knives, glass, metals and shrapnel.

So she'd been hard pressed to come up with a explanation exactly why Michael running across the street towards her Saab clutching his bleeding arm had set her off so badly.

But it had.

" _Michael, what happened?"_

" _He didn't want to make friends."_

For some reason, his usual glib comeback to his injury had made her see red, redder than the blood that he was trying to keep from running down his left arm and onto her upholstery. She had fled the scene, sirens warbling in the background spurring her onward. Fiona had put the Saab through its paces and ended up back at the loft in record time.

Ms Glenanne had been fairly certain the bleeding man had known that she was upset. He'd been a spy after all; it was his damned job to read people. But she had been equally certain that he had no clue _why_ she was so angry. _Fair enough for once_ , as she'd been having a hard time putting a finger on it herself.

Instead the ex-guerilla had put her fingers to his lacerated arm, stitched the slice shut and advised him to spend some quality time re-learning how to defend himself against a blade before exiting the loft.

When he didn't call later, she hadn't been surprised. Giving them both some space had probably been a really good idea at that particular time, though she'd had to admit she'd been missing having him next to her when she'd gotten into bed that night, the pillows still holding a trace of his scent.

As she'd stared at the ceiling of her luxury flat in the darkness, Fiona had felt the answer come over her like a cold wintery wind, the kind she remembered seeping through the cracks of the old window frames and stealing her breath away in the icy blackness of her childhood nights on the farm, when the fire would go out before its time.

She'd become accustomed to having him around again. Anything that threatened to separate them, be it his bullheaded persistence in putting himself in danger without proper back-up or his own stubborn insistence on finding out who burned him and getting back in the good graces of the CIA, _it all ripped at that nearly never quite healed enough hole he had blasted in her heart when he had abandoned her in Dublin without so much as a note, a word, an apology…nothing…_

The high pitched buzz of the alert tone had jarred her out of her sleep. Slowly, Fiona had realized that she'd finally drifted off into a fitful slumber and that it had in fact become daylight. She'd reached for the device and read the missed text that had popped up on the screen, inviting her to lunch.

She'd sighed heavily, wiped the grime from her eyes and sent _"yes."_ First Campbell and now Michael with the cell phone invitations… _Was she really that hard to talk to?_

Sometimes reputations were earned, she'd supposed. _Hers certainly was_. She hardly had reason to complain about it when it didn't suit her inasmuch as she traded on the fear she struck into people.

 _Don' ask tha question if ya don' wanna know tha answer, lass… her Da's voice had echoed in her head._

As it had turned out, Michael ended up cancelling on her for lunch due to a series of events that included Madeline, a Haitian man seeking justice for his murdered daughter and Sam twisting Michael's arm to help, which was fine with her really because she had some gun trading to do that day and the opportunity to vent her frustrations on a deal gone bad had almost been more anticipated than the successful completion of the transaction. Plus, she had to persuade some of her gun runner contacts to put her in touch with some people smugglers and that had been no small task either.

 _Michael loved to get self-righteous about what she did for a living, but he never seemed to have any problems using her criminal contacts when it suited his purposes… Like he wa' so fecking noble._

But the deal had gone well and some therapy shopping at some very high scale boutiques had been in order. At first, she had been perturbed by her retail pursuits. The Irishwoman admittedly had never been ample when it came to cup size, but it seemed there was some sort of conspiracy amongst all the designers this season to squeeze what she had upfront and out the top of the dresses. She had been favoring looser clothing since she'd been spending more time horizontal with her dark haired lover. It felt like all the extra attention her breasts were getting lately had made them very sensitive indeed.

So it'd been a very happy coincidence that Michael had called to invite her to a party that required a designer dress while she'd been standing in front of a full length mirror in tight, black little number that fit right everywhere. She'd been pleased to know she looked like the small fortune she had just paid for the garment when she had politely informed the sales clerk she would be wearing it out of the store.

As _Claire Honore_ had stood around, shouting her indignation en François and making her moves on Luc Renard, who had really been a privileged Haitian sociopath named Jean Pierre Dumont, the voice of another extremely rich, powerful and decidedly French man had come to mind. It had been Armand Andreani who had taught her a high class accent and a designer dress could be far more effective and far less bloody than an assault rifle. She had bluffed her way into an invitation only polo match and the presence of a hard to reach Bulgarian wearing less than she had on now and sporting a British accent.

Once inside Renard's Star Island mansion, she had sent him off with the promise of filling the biggest bathtub in Miami with him and some of his closest friends. The office hadn't contained much, as she had informed the ex-spy while she was nosing around looking for a place to plant a bug. His concern for her safety had been touching, but it'd turned out they had bigger worries. Claude Laurent had stood on his car with a megaphone outside the mansion, announcing Monsieur Duman's crimes, and allowing her to slip out of the office and out through the assembled guests undetected in the chaos.

Michael had saved Claude's life and she had found herself home alone again that night as well, lying on her back and thinking about the past, current and future status of her relationship with Mr Westen.

" _You'll always answer when he calls."_

How many nights over the years had she lain awake staring at a ceiling, just as she had that first night back home at her Mammy's house? How many nights over the years had she tried to anesthetize herself to the feelings she had for him? She had gone back to Armand's bed for a very brief time before returning to her gunrunner life and the equally brief company of various men. Dating Campbell had been her latest attempt in a string of many to put Michael Westen behind her and move on.

" _I'm just the guy you borrow ambulances from."_

Had it really been any coincidence that the paramedic had exited from her life just prior to her wayward lover entering it again? Had it really been such a surprise that she'd allowed him to make love to her as it was blatantly clear that Michael still had a hold of her heart, as much as she wished it were not so because he apparently wished it were not so?

" _I'm not your boyfriend, he is."_

How many times would she allow him into her heart and her bed… _only to lose him again…?_

They had grown closer in these last few weeks than they had been since their time in Ireland, closer than they had had a chance to get during those few months following her birthday before….

 _Before he'd run off to confront Phillip Cowan without back up… before he'd run off to meet the people that had burned him all alone… and once he'd gotten himself out from under Carla's organization…?_

The potential answer had left her feeling rather queasy and then in a really snarky mood when she'd met up with Mr Axe and Mr Westen at their usual table the next morning for breakfast.

" _So I asked around about who might have brought your knife wielding fake banker into the country. It was rough," she'd advised them both, spearing the melon and chewing with gusto. She had gone from nauseous to ravenous that morning. "I mean, the Miami gun smugglers and the Miami people smugglers, they don't along. And I've always been more of a gun person. "_

" _Sure as hell not a people person," Sam had interjected._

" _You wanna take over, Sam? Oh wait, that's right. I forgot. All your friends wear uniforms, which makes you useless." Fiona hadn't been in the mood for his smart ass remarks._

" _Hey, who found out about his guy in the first place? Huh?"_

 _As usual, the man in middle had intervened, cutting them off with a slash of his hand._

" _Sam, Fi, just keep looking…."_

" _I intend to," she had advised before flouncing off._

Another day of intimidating information out of people had led to another night alone. Claude Laurent would be staying at the loft until the boys finished sorting out Luc Renard's identity problems while she had been tasked with finding the man who had tried to kill Michael. She would have been fine with hunting the man down for reasons of revenge, but the fact that the ex-spy was intent on forging alliances with whomever had tried to end his life because of a wrongly perceived connection to Carla was ridiculous in her opinion. If someone was intent on killing the woman's operatives, let them!

But she had gotten a call in the early morning hours and she had been feeling particularly… she couldn't really put a name to the feeling… but the opportunity to intimidate someone while looking like a fashion model, instead of the former IRA terrorist the English government thought she was, had really appealed to her. So, one see-through, off the shoulder orange mini dress and wedges later, she'd been sitting in her Saab in the early morning light, watching Gary the human smuggler empty out this SUV and his boat.

" _It seems my people skills are improving, Michael," she'd purred into the phone, happy after he'd just informed her that Sam had gone to stash Claude somewhere safe and then scout the grounds of the Renard estate to look for a place to park later in preparation for their operation._

" _You found the guy who smuggled in our fake banker from the Cayman Islands?"_

" _I found where he keeps his boat and he just arrived. I'm sure he'll be in a chatty mood when I'm done introducing myself."_

 _Michael's light laughter through the phone line had suddenly set her on fire. "You go easy on him, Fi…"_

" _You're breaking up…" She had closed the cell phone and tossed it into the back seat._

She'd enjoyed the fact that her reputation had preceded her with the smuggler; he knew all about her shooting up Paco's boat and setting fire to that guy's place up in Boca. Before she'd left, Fiona'd made sure that he also knew what she'd done to the mercenary bastard up in Lake Worth who had kidnapped Jojo Delaney's oldest son and what would happen to Gary if he warned anyone about them conversing.

When she'd gotten back to the car, there had been three missed calls and a message from Michael asking her to come by the loft once she'd completed her task and that he would be waiting for her. She had grinned broadly, throwing the bag that contained the change of clothes she'd brought in case there had been some sneaking around required on the front seat and putting the black sports car in gear.

Michael had been almost all the way out of his clothes and getting ready to take a shower when she'd arrived at the loft. Taking a quick look around to make sure they were truly alone, Fiona had followed him in the bathroom.

" _How's your arm?" she'd queried, running her fingers over the water proof bandage, before passing him by to perch on the toilet and remove her shoes._

" _Better," he'd responded as he'd started fiddling with the taps, trying to get some warm enough water out of them. "Fi…I'm….sorry if I upset you…" he had offered without turning to face her while he spoke._

 _Fiona had come up behind him, pressing her now naked body into his almost undressed form as she wrapped her arms around him and began stroking his stomach, lightly scratching over the taut muscles with her nails, before sweeping higher to caress the broad planes of his chest and the second most sensitive points on his well appointed anatomy._

" _I've missed you," she'd told him frankly. Although she'd spent the past few nights worrying about getting too close to him, now suddenly she couldn't have gotten close enough to him fast enough._

 _He'd turned in her arms and leaned in for a long lingering kiss that had gotten progressively more demanding as she had slid her lithe limbs up his back, pressing their hips more firmly together._

" _I need to get cleaned up," he'd informed her as he'd broken their lip lock. "I have to be at—"_

" _Let me help you," she'd cut him off, putting her thumbs in the waist band of his boxers._

 _And helped him she had, right out of his remaining clothing and into the shower. She didn't have to ask why they'd spent more time making love in the tiny bathroom at the back of the loft than in his bed. It was the only room with a door that locked, which meant it was the only place with a modicum of guaranteed privacy in his living space, since virtually everyone walked into the loft like they owned it, whether friend like Sam and Madeline, or foe like Bly and Carla, herself included._

 _It had been slow and sweet, what passed between them, as they washed one another before finding their way to the bottom of the tub, entwining their bodies and their hearts before cleaning up again._

 _He'd left her in there with another parting kiss and a glowing expression that was probably as happy as the one on her face if she'd had to guess so that she could dry off and dress whilst he went into the larger room to do the same. She'd been finishing off a yogurt and reading through the brochure she'd picked up while he was making his final preparations to go. The angst she'd felt the past few nights had been gone._

" _You should think about moving into one of these storage units. Some of them have air conditioning… it would be a step up," she'd told him, waving the brochure like a little fan._

" _I'll keep that in mind," he'd returned, holding his chin out as a hint that he needed help with his necktie._

 _Fiona had smiled softly. He knew perfectly well how to adjust the thing. It was another way of sharing a moment with her, one that he had used many times in the past and it had pleased her greatly just then._

" _Call the storage unit and make some inquiries; let them know Gustavo passed away and that you're coming by after hours to check on that unit."_

" _I think I can handle that." She'd finished adjusting his tie. "And you can say hello to Mr Duman for me."_

Fiona had taken a trip up the warehouse, had lunch, had her lunch come back up on her as she had broken out in a nasty sweat, taken another shower, changed and gone back to the loft, all the while it had taken the three of them to return from the Dumon estate with the news that things had gone badly.

She'd lain on the bed painting her nails while the boys had formed a new plan and then had excused herself afterwards once the paint had dried. She hadn't liked the way she'd felt all afternoon and a nap seemed to be in order. The Irish woman knew she needed to be fresh for her performance again as the French woman later that day. Whoever he was, their Haitian target was large and heavily muscled. It would take some work to hold him down while the sedative was taking effect.

Michael hadn't been surprised when she'd told him she had things to do to get ready because he had to go outfit the truck Sam was getting for the kidnapping. But he had surprised her greatly by giving her a smile and a squeeze of her hand that was resting on the window frame after he'd walked her to the car.

By the time they had finished their job and Sam had gone off to clean up and have a visit with his FBI buddies, Fiona had risen from her bed, feeling much more refreshed and in the game. Showering for the third time that day and slipping into an outfit guaranteed to attract her mark, she had headed off to coax Monsieur Luc Renard to accompany her back to her hotel room.

Afterwards, as Jean Pierre Dumon was sleeping like an evil sedated baby on his way back to the loft to keep a date with her Saab's trunk, Michael had dropped Fiona off at her doorstep. It was a testament to how drained she had felt that she'd allowed Sam to drive her car and Michael to drive her home and the ex-spy knew it. He'd come in the door and wrapped her arms around her, thanking her for helping bring Veronique's killer to justice. He'd promised that he and Sam would drop her baby off later that night.

They had kissed long and lingering and then he'd asked if she was up for a little night surveillance the following eve. Fiona had agreed and then had sent him home on the excuse that she was sleeping poorly of late and needed to rest up for the job. It had barely registered when later on that night Michael had slipped inside her apartment, kissed her on the cheek and deposited her keys back in her bag on the night stand. He'd whispered something to her, but she had been just too tired to care.

The next day, while the eldest Westen boy was visiting with his mother and Mr Axe was meeting with his old friends, Agents Lane and Harris, Ms Glenanne decided to set an appointment. Her upbringing had taught her that a trip to a hospital or doctor was more likely to end in a trip to jail, so she had always tended her own wounds when possible. Dating a paramedic had been a strange but educational experience.

But waking up alone by choice that morning, sweating and nauseous, before flying to the bathroom barely in time had left her with a problem to puzzle out; the way she was feeling reminded her all too much of the start of a bout of Dengue Fever she'd had back in the day. She didn't think any of Dumon's security people would travel back and forth to Haiti, but support staff and party guests might have.

As she thought back in it, several of the guards at Dumon's party _were_ coughing at the back of the house near the kitchen and one man in particular had spilled a tray of drinks and had said he wasn't feeling well as he'd laid hands upon her after stumbling into her. He had served her a drink earlier in the night.

Having made the appointment with someone legitimate enough to do blood work, but circumspect enough that she needn't work about the results getting around, Fiona sat on her bed, feeling miserable and concluding that she needed to sleep it off as much as possible. They were going to stake out the warehouse tonight and she'd be damned if she was going to let Sam go in her place as back-up.

The next thing she knew, her phone was going off. _It was time to go?_ The redhead sat up and ran a hand through her hair. Shaking her head as she shut off the alarm on her cell, she moved off the bed and headed towards the shower, attempting to wash the malaise away. Another nap after lunch and double something or other Cuban-made drinks with shots of espresso would be in order before this evening.

Of all the luck to take a case that would expose her to something tropical right before Michael needed her to bring her A-game. No matter, she was Fiona Glenanne and she would make it work regardless.

()()()()()()

When his back-up arrived at the loft that night, dressed all in black and toting the heavy hardware he had requested, the woman in question had looked a bit flushed at first. The admittedly heavy leather bags seemed to be giving her some trouble as she tried to maneuver them up the narrow metal stairs that led to his home. As Michael took the larger load from her, he was forcibly reminded that Fiona was in fact a head shorter than he was and was half his weight. She was always so strong and independent that he often forgot how small the package was in which the little dynamo kept all that energy.

But whatever concerns he'd momentarily had were pushed to the back of his mind as the munitions and supplies were laid out on his bed, selecting those items he thought necessary from the options she'd provided him while the former guerilla assembled a weapon with plenty of power and range.

"You called the storage place?" the dark haired man in the _stealth suit_ asked as he loaded his go-bag.

"Manager knows we're coming," she answered. "For the record, Michael, I don't like this plan. "

"What plan?" He barely glanced at her. He knew what was coming next.

"You using yourself as bait." She wouldn't look at him either. Fiona kept her eyes focused on checking her rifle. "To see if whoever sent Gustavo after you takes another crack," she concluded.

"That's what I would do," he told her honestly, looking at her and wondering what was going on with her now. She'd been off the last couple of days. He noticed, but not knowing what to do about it, he'd let it go. Claude Laurent had kept him busy and now he was one step closer to getting the man who had tried to kill him. She had seemed to bounce back just fine when they reconnected again the other day.

She finally returned his stare and her expression unsettled him. The lithe woman heaved a sigh and then hefted the weapon, sighting down the scope and ensuring that the alignment was correct.

"You gonna let me back you up for real this time?"

"Fi.." he admonished as he put the clip in his SIG, chambered the weapon and then stuffed it in his waistband. There was an odd flavor to her concern, an overprotectiveness he didn't understand.

"If you're right, there's a good chance he's waiting on a roof with a rifle to take a shot at you," Fiona told him as she continued to look through the telescopic lens, before peering slyly at him over the stock and whispering, "That's what I would do."

"I need him alive," he told her directly as he hoisted the bag onto his shoulders, considering the matter closed. He started to turn to head out to the Charger.

His companion lowered her weapon so quickly that she almost buried the barrel into the bedding.

"And I need _you_ alive, Michael!"

Fiona drew a sharp breath, as though she'd surprised herself as much as him with her outburst.

"And so does Sam and so does your mom! We've all gotten used to having you around and none of us wants to go back to living with what it feels like to _not_ have you around!" She slung the firearm back up onto her shoulder. "So you just think about that while you're risking your life gathering your intel!"

And she stormed out of the loft.

Michael stood there, stunned and speechless, for a moment.

Not knowing what to say or do _about that_ , he did what his training told him to do and refocused on the mission. It made for a very charged, but silent, ride to the warehouse. But she was a professional in her own right and, once they were on site, they followed the plans they had laid out earlier with precision.

 _If you suspect you're walking into an ambush, searching for where the bad guys are hidden is probably going to get you killed_.

He crouched down now, in front of the door of the Unit 2410 in Building 23 where Gustavo's employer had his warehouse. "See anything, Fi?"

 _Unless you get lucky and find them in the first place you look, you are dead._

"Not yet…" Her voice sounded in his earpiece. "Maybe it's time we announced our arrival."

 _If you can manage it, the best move is to make it impossible to hide._

Michael loaded the flare into the gun quickly, then raised his arm straight up, firing it such the lighting drifted over the roof, while he pressed as tightly into the roll up door as possible.

"He's right above you," Fiona informed him. "He's on the move, Michael."

Despite their best laid plans, his quarry had flown over the roof tops of the buildings while Michael had pursued on the ground. His ridiculously fleet and fortunate target had managed to leap over a twelve foot razor wire fence into the bed of a pickup and off to his car. _Yeah, it turned out they'd met before._

 _Victor… Victor tried to kill me… Victor tried to kill me not because Carla told him to… Victor had tried to kill me because I was working for Carla…. The enemy of my enemy could be my only friend in this…._

The ride back to the loft was as silent as the drive to the warehouse had been, but with a completely different vibe. His thoughts were completely wrapped up in trying to plan, what this meant, how he could turn this new revelation to his advantage, imaging the possibilities of what could happen and then strategizing each outcome, what were the attendant risks and how to deploy resources, the need to get the non-combatants out of harms' ways… doing his Michael Westen, covert operative supreme routine…

He only really noticed Fiona hadn't said a word, even after they had parked the large black muscle car in the space below the loft stairs behind her smaller black sports car, when she'd begun to silently empty one trunk into the other.

"You don't have to do that tonight," he told her, laying ahold of the deck lid and closing it.

She just looked at him. Even in the low lights, it was possible to see how fatigued she was.

 _How had he not noticed that before?_

"Come upstairs," he urged. "It can wait for tomorrow."

"No, ya don' wanna go around looking like a gunrunner if yer get stopped," she slurred, a bit of Irish coming out. She tried to push past him and go back towards the Saab, but he caught her arm and held her in place. Then he used his superior statistics to back her into the side of the Charger and pin her.

Michael lifted a calloused hand to cradle her jawline and tilted her head up. "Please, Fi?"

She shook her head slightly, as much as she could while he stroked her cheek with his thumb now. "I think I picked up something at Mr Dumon's besides him," she gibed. "I need to get some sleep."

He stared into her eyes under the minimal light. Yes, she did look tired… wiped out actually… but he couldn't put his finger on what else was there. "Then let me drive you home and tuck you in."

Ms Glenanne surprised him by agreeing without much of an argument. She shook her head more forcefully when he leaned forward to kiss her. "Have ya not heard me? I'm not—"

"I've got a pretty sturdy immune system, I'll take my chances." Michael surrounded her face with both his hands and drew her in for a kiss, though he kept it shorter than usual. Releasing her, he opened the passenger door and eased her into the seat. "I'll be right back."

He was back in the Charger in no time, her things and his bag in hand, but she was already dozing off when he got there. Mr Westen watched her from the corner of his eye most of the way back to her apartment. She looked wane and he compared it to her earlier appearance. _She had been a bit off._

The ex-spy unloaded the back of the black muscle car while she excused herself to make a cup of tea.

The tiny Irishwoman was sitting on her bed, the unattended mug on the nightstand, staring at nothing, when he came back inside the apartment. Mr Westen then excused himself to take a shower, half expecting that she would have joined him. But when he returned to the bedroom, toweling through his wet hair and wearing the pajama bottoms he'd brought with him, the weary woman was already asleep on top of her comforter still dressed in her black clothes and her boots, her beverage cold and abandoned.

That stopped him short. Fiona would _never_ have allowed anyone else to do that. He stood looking at her for a moment, feeling another smile spread over his countenance for no good reason he could think of. _She was so beautiful. Even exhausted, she captivated him as she had since that day back in Belfast._

Sitting on the end of the soft, queen sized mattress, he doffed her footwear and then loomed over her, removing her cargo pants. She barely stirred, other than to give him a bleary, one-eyed stare that confirmed his identity before she went back to sleep. He felt her forehead, which was warm but not alarmingly so. The dark haired man did a quick check of her pulse points and then scooped her limp form off the bed long enough to pull back the covers. The redhead was dead weight in his arms…

Michael wondered what sort of bug Fiona could have picked up as he scooted into her bed and spooned up against her. The feel of her frame against his was soothing as he tried not to worry about how sick she might turn out to be. Her outburst from earlier echoed in his brain as well. _No, he didn't think about how other people felt about him not being around, he hadn't for decades._ The concept that someone would miss him for reasons other than needing his services was completely foreign to him.

As he cuddled her close and pressed tiny kisses into her hair, he remembered what it had felt like to think her lost to him forever. Trying to wrap his mind around how he had felt and then applying it to Fiona's feelings was an exercise that was painful at the least. Michael pushed that back into its box and let her heat permeate his whole body. He'd missed sleeping with her, that he could admit, and he had a lot of planning and executing to do over the next couple of days. So the ex-spy let himself dream of happy days in Dublin and get some much needed rest and, though he was loath to admit it, comfort.

()()()()()

When the sound of her phone buzzing startled them both awake, neither could believe they had slept that heavily or this late. Fiona in particular felt totally disoriented when he had reached over the top of her to snatch up the cell and then hand it to her a second or two too late to take the call. The Irish woman was less concerned about who it had been on the phone than with how she had ended up wearing half her combat gear and snuggled up against the well-muscled frame of one Michael Westen.

"Hey…" His smile was dazzling as she looked back up into his beautiful blue eyes. His super spy mask hadn't fallen into place yet and it made her heart skip a beat. "Aren't you going to see who called?"

"I've got more important questions to think about," she told him with a grin of her own.

"And what would that be?"

"What are you making me for breakfast? I missed me dinner…"

He kissed her cheek, pleased that she seemed to be more herself this morning. "What do you want?"

"Maybe an omelet, if your cooking skills are up to the challenge..."

"Convincing me to get out of bed right now is too much of a challenge," he whispered in her ear, squeezing her tightly before pulling away and turning her onto her back.

"Honestly, Michael, I'm starving," she pleaded.

"So am I," he agreed, raising up on one elbow before his head disappeared under the covers and her clothing did as well shortly thereafter. She felt like she would pass out from all the attention her body was being given in _all_ the right places and felt a indescribably sweet warmth spread throughout her entire being as they joined together in intimacy, the feel of him against her almost making her weep.

Eventually, Fiona got her breakfast and her shower, but the glow lingered as she sat on the end of the bed smiling at his back while he dressed for their meeting with his handler. _Maybe she would get to shoot Carla today_ , she thought happily before remembering the phone message.

But regardless of how contented she had been the moment before, something in the tone of the woman on the phone had made her blood ran cold when she heard the words of her medical provider replayed.

"Ms Glenanne, ya needing to come and see me about yar test results as soon as possible."


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** _This is the third part of the 3.01 premiere AU that was originally posted as Chapter 15 in "Puppies, Kittens and Gun Toting Babies."_

 _()()()()()()_

 **3.01 – The Enemy of My Enemy – Part 3**

 _An alternate for Season Three and beyond following on from_ _2.11 – Hot Spot_

 _()()()()()()_

 _Miami 2009_

When Michael had asked her to watch his back, apparently he had meant it literally. Sitting in the Charger, letting the sea breeze off the marina waft through the windows, Fiona tapped her foot irritably against the brake pedal of the parked muscle car while she stared at the back of his charcoal grey suit coat as he sat facing Carla and away from the vehicle. _They_ were chatting near the water with a small concrete table between the two hard benches upon which _they_ were seated while _she_ waited on hold of the doctor to come on the line, impatient and incapable of doing anything to resolve her circumstances.

The Irishwoman had spotted Carla's back-up. They were doing a terrible job of being inconspicuous to say the least. The pair was the same two who'd accompanied Michael's handler to the loft the other day and the urge to shoot them to make a point about _how rotten_ a job they were doing was fast becoming overwhelming. Luckily for the hapless duo, the medico came on the line as she was reaching for her H&K.

"Ms. Glenanne, you'll be happy to be knowing that ya don' have the Dengue Fever, or any other tropical ailment fer that matter."

And it was a relief, but it begged a worse question. "And…?"

"And I know in your line of work thot congratulations might not be what ya be wanting fer what I'm going to tell ya..."

"Spit it out!" Fiona demanded, her nerves shattered and the man at the heart of this on his way back.

"You're pregnant." The subtle Jamaican accent somehow made the statement surreal.

"You're wrong," she countered harshly. "Run the tests again!"

"I be guessing ya wanna to know how pregnant ya are, so if you could come in the office later—"

"I have to go," the redhead declared, snapping the phone shut and getting out of the vehicle. Leaning against the classic muscle car, she crossed her arms over her chest and channelled her anxiety into interrogating the ex-spy who was strolling casually towards her.

 _Like good poker players, spies know it's impossible to hide the tells that come with a bloodstream full of adrenaline. If showing fear or concern jeopardizes a mission, you replace it with an emotion that won't._

"You didn't tell her it was Victor, did you? The man has tried to kill you twice and you're protecting him." She stared past him, watching Carla and her people retreat into the distance with a furious glare, unable to look at him for the moment and hoping that he would misread why she was totally wound up.

"He's the one enemy I know Carla has. I'd like to least talk to him before I turn him in."

He held out his hands for the keys and she glanced at him before dropping them into his grasp.

"You think he'll stop trying to kill you long enough for the two of you to grab lunch and have a chat?" she asked in a sing song voice that oozed sarcasm as she went around to the passenger side.

"Everybody loves a free lunch."

His flippant disregard for his own safety made her blood boil. Fiona stared straight out the windshield, exuding righteous anger while trying to pull her dispersant thoughts together. _The tests had to be wrong, the doctor had to be wrong, Michael was wrong to try to make friends with someone who was trying to kill him and she was wrong to try to-_

"Fi?"

She continued to keep her gaze on the road ahead of them, her mouth set in a hard line, looking like cold fury on the outside while trying collect herself on the inside. He let the charged atmosphere linger on for several more minutes as they headed back to the loft.

"Look, Fi, I know you're upset."

"Really?" _Upset doesn't begin to cover it._ "Ya don' say."

"Yes, it's a calculated risk," he continued as if she'd answered him properly. "But if I can catch him when he comes at me again, then we _can_ have a chat and we'll all be safer once I know what he knows."

She snorted. "You'll be safer once he's dead."

"Fiona," he sighed. "I don't like this any more than you do, but I need leverage to get out from under the people that burned me and he's the only option I have right now."

Then there was the only sound of the motor, the proximate traffic and the wind through the windows.

"And then what, Michael?" was the query that broke the heavy silence. "What are you going to do when you have your freedom again?"

He looked over at her and saw something in her countenance that made him turn away once more.

"Let's talk about that when I'm free," he suggested.

Fiona closed her eyes as an exasperated sigh escaped her. _When had either of them ever truly been free? The man she'd fallen in love with was married to the CIA… and she was the other woman at best._

She heard him pull out his phone and pressed number two on the speed dial.

"Sam, can you get over to my mom's place?" and he outlined for Sam what he needed done.

"Just make sure you're _around_ for that conversation, Michael," she advised almost inaudibly, as they pulled up to the gates surrounding the loft and she got out of the car.

Once they were upstairs and inside, Fiona moved quickly to the refrigerator. She'd overhead enough of the call to know that Sam was on his way to retrieve Madeline from her home and escort her to the loft.

When Michael's mother arrived, there would be no opportunity for quiet conversation. She couldn't tell him anything specific while this was going on, nor did she have anything solid to report. But she needed him to know that they had a date for a discussion about where their relationship was headed. This pregnancy scare _, that's all it was she decided, it was a scare,_ had made her reflect regarding the unstable nature of their on-again, off-again association and, while she did indeed know how to thrive on chaos, there was something to be said for a small spot of certainty, if any such thing could exist in their lives.

She was pulling two yogurts out of the fridge when she heard the silverware drawer close behind her. As she shut the refrigerator, he came upon her, pressing into her back and wrapping his arms around her.

"I'm sorry, but the sooner we clear this up, the sooner we can move on…" he whispered.

He let the words linger in the air as his lips lingered near her ear, then nipped at the lobe ever so gently.

Fiona sighed… Did he mean what she thought he did, or was he just trying to placate her in order gain her cooperation? _God, how she hated these guessing games with him…._ Still, it was more attention and affection than he'd shown her in recent memory….

After collecting several kisses from him, they had settled down at the bar to eat their respective snacks and try to puzzle out the best way for them to flush Victor out into the open. After agreeing on their tactics, Fiona had no more than finished swallowing a mouthful of dairy when there was a crash of sound in back of her. As predicated, Michael's mother had come through the door fully on the warpath and not at all pleased when informed that she would be staying with her son in his dump of an abode.

However, the sound of the gate opening, which Sam assured the ex-spy he had locked, stopped Maddie in mid-rant and all the hardware came out as they positioned themselves strategically throughout the room before the dark haired man pulled the handle on the still charred barrier to his home, revealing a slender brunette expensively dressed in tight-fitting clothing standing at the entrance.

"Sam?" was Michael's stunned syllable. Clearly, he had known immediately who she was.

"Yeah, Mike?" Mr. Axe responded.

"He was talking to me," the woman corrected, stepping inside as Michael lowered his weapon and their eyes locked.

"Who are you?" Ms Glenanne inquired. She could read people at a glance. It had saved her life many times as a member of the IRA and in her later career as a gunrunner cum a black marketer and she didn't like what she was seeing one bit.

The other woman turned those brown eyes towards her for just a moment.

"I'm Samantha," she answered before looking back towards Mr. Westen with an expression on her pale face that made Fiona's skin crawl. "Michael and I used to be engaged."

The other Sam in the room blew out a noisy breath.

 _For a spy, compartmentalization is second nature. Information is given on a need to know basis. In your professional life, this approach keeps you safe. In your personal life, it can be dangerous_.

Michael stood there, seemingly in a trance for another painfully long moment before muttering, "Excuse us," and disappearing out the doorway with former naval commander in pursuit.

Fiona didn't remember making her way to the bed and sitting down. She didn't really track Madeline dropping the butcher knife in the sink with a noisy clatter, although she was vaguely aware of the cigarette his mother had lit as the older woman had stormed past her with it to perch on the stairs.

Mr. Axe had apparently determined that his friend didn't require back up, so he had returned inside, chuckling nervously and trying to figure out how to defuse the tension that was palpable in the room.

"So, uh, another Sam, this is gonna be confusing, huh?"

"Have you ever been secretly engaged to my son?" the blonde shot back.

"No," he admitted quietly.

"Then I think we'll be able to tell you apart."

"Fair enough."

"I can't believe it. No, I- I can believe it. It's just like Michael!" Madeline ranted.

Fiona, staring straight ahead with her hands folded in her lap, was too wrapped up in her own internal dialogue to care one whit about what the older two people in the room were discussing.

 _An ex-fiancée… Michael had been engaged to someone…Michael had been about to marry someone… Michael had lived with her in Ireland and left her, he'd made love to her and abandoned her, only to drop into her life again and again, never once saying a word about being almost married to someone…_

"Look, ladies, don't be too hard on Mike. I'm sure there's a very good reason why he never mentioned her before. I mean, you know, these things just happen sometimes…" Suddenly, the ex-SEAL seemed to realize that Little Miss Firecracker had been way too quiet…"Anybody else need a drink? No? Okay…" And like the good soldier he was, Sam grabbed a beer and beat a hasty retreat out onto the balcony.

While his mother continued to vent her frustrations at her son's obliqueness, Ms Glenanne let the words wash over her as she sighed and kept her eyes fixed on a spot on the wall between the window and the workbench as her mind swirled with half-finished thoughts and divergent impulses.

 _When were they engaged?_ …She wanted to walk away and never look back…. _Why had he proposed to this Samantha and not her?_ …She could go to New York… _Was he engaged to Samantha while he had been sleeping with her?…_ She could go back home to Ireland… _Had he abandoned Samantha and moved on to her, or abandoned her and nearly married Samantha?_ She could disappear… _Why was Samantha here? …_ She could beat the living daylights out of him and grind the pieces into the dirt… _Why was SHE still here, sleeping with him, hoping that there was something between them when he obviously…_

Michael re-entered the loft, but Fiona didn't acknowledge him. She could feel rather than see Sam return to the room, standing a few careful feet to her right, what he judged a safe distance no doubt.

"We…uhh… need to have lunch… at a uh…"

"All of us, Mike?" Mr. Axe inquired, looking over the top of the Irish woman, who was sitting up ramrod straight on the edge of Mr. Westen's bed and saying nothing.

"Yes… well, no, actually…:" The dark haired man at least had the good grace to look chagrined. "Samantha's in trouble and we need to talk—"

Madeline cut him off with a derisive sneer. " _That's_ an understatement."

"Mom, I need you to stay here. This is about to get a lot more dangerous. Fi, can you watch—"

Ms. Glenanne shot up off the bed in one smooth motion. "Of course, Michael, I wouldn't miss this for the world. Sam, you're with me," she ordered, sending him a look that demanded obedience.

"Whatever you say, boss lady," the former SEAL agreed as he trailed behind her. "We'll follow you, brother." She heard Sam say behind her as she descended the stairs and completely ignored with the brunette already sitting in the passenger seat of the Charger.

()

Sam had said little on their drive to the outdoor patio dining spot which was adjacent to the hiding place of the source of all of Samantha's current troubles, an evil SOB by the name of Tyler Brennan. Their relationship was prickly at best and she had used more than one opportunity to make sure he had suffered a bit of physical pain while they were working jobs together.

But if there was one thing she couldn't stand more than his antipathy, it was his sympathy.

But he had surprisingly been smart enough to wait until they were out of his car and on their way through the parking garage towards the elevators, where he had room to dodge any possible blows, before saying anything.

"Look, Fi, I know you're pissed and you have every right to be…" She could tell this was awkward in the extreme for him to be agreeing with her. "But he never told me either… I mean, we did missions together, I saved his ass, he saved mine more than once, but he never told me a thing about her."

"Yea, I did that with him, too. Tell me, Sam, did you sleep with Michael during any of that time?"

"Fair enough," had been his final words to her on the subject.

As they had assembled around the table, three lime-laden ice waters and a Long Island Iced Tea later, they were discussing the particulars of his ex-fiancée's problems with Michael sitting between the two of them and Sam sipping his booze on her right.

She tried not to be too catty when calling the thief out for being coy about her line of work, assuring the brunette she was among friends with only a hint of the real emotion she was feeling.

 _Fiona could hear Michael's voice in her head. 'You were robbing banks for the IRA' he'd said like he was so much better than she was because he stole for his government and yet he had proposed to a woman who apparently was master acquisitions artists enough to steal the guidance chip from a UAV spy drone._

"Oh come on," Sam protested vehemently as the other Sam had laid the stolen military tech on the table, casually removing it from her purse like it was the latest hot hard drive on the market. "I thought this was a 'get to know the ex' lunch. Now it's a 'nineteen government agencies are chasing me' lunch?"

"No, I-I got away clean. But when they realize it's missing, they're gonna know it was me."

That caught Fiona's attention. She took her sunglasses off and stared at the pale woman. "How…?"

"I had to get a job working there to get access. My key card activity will give me away," Samantha explained. "I'm new, I went in at night and if you check my history, you'll see that..."

"Sam, why would you—" the ex-spy began, clearly wondering why she had been so sloppy.

Ms. Keyes cut him off. "I didn't have time to do it any other way. Brennan kidnapped my son. This is the ransom.

"You have a son?" Michael asked quickly.

 _That really got the redhead's attention_.

"Charlie's nine," Samantha said, staring down at the table and avoiding everyone's eyes.

Fiona looked from the other woman's downcast eyes to Michael's incredulous profile, doing the math in her head and arriving back at the proximity of his departure from Ireland. "When did you—"

"Is he—" The dark haired man stammered. His blue eyes might have been hidden behind his Oliver Peoples Victory 55's, but his voice gave away everything.

Samantha refused to meet his eyes for another moment and then said, "No. No, he's not…" The look on her face made the Irishwoman want to scream. "But he needs you."

Fiona saw him first turn his gaze towards Sam and then her. She put her glasses back on to hide the conflicting emotions that were churning inside her which would no doubt be reflected in her stormy blue green eyes _._

 _It was a kid, a kid that needed help, a kid that was being used a pawn in some dangerous game…_

"When I think about what might happen to him, I—" the woman's voice broke.

 _Just like her child might be one day…_

"What do you want us to do?" Mr. Westen queried.

"The trade's tomorrow. I don't want to give this to Brennan, but I need my boy back. Please…"

Of course they were going to do it. There was no way Sam Axe was going to allow military tech to fall in the hands of black marketer and there was no a kid in danger, any kid, who would be left undefended, not while Fiona Glenanne was around… not even if it was Michael's previous undiscovered offspring.

So they scouted the site; the former Navy man had his say, the one-time terrorist had her say and the ex-spy laid out the plan that they were all going to follow in order to rescue the kid and keep the chip.

Sam decided that taking Samantha back to her hotel was the safer option and they were suddenly alone in Bayfront Park, walking towards the waiting Charger.

"I know I owe you some answers."

"You owe me a helluva lot more than that."

In response, Mr Westen moved slightly ahead of her, leaving a view of from behind his shoulder as he spoke quickly, but never once looked her in the eye.

"I knew Samantha before I met you. We were in St. Petersburg in '97. She was helping me out on a job and things moved, uh, quickly. Then I realized we didn't have what we needed to make it last."

"What was that? _Trust?_ Did you sneak out in the middle of the night on her too or did you manage to tell her goodbye? Did you keep dropping into her life again often enough for her to keep holding out hope that there might be a happy ending someday somewhere somehow?" she demanded fiercely.

She stopped walking and planted her hands on her hips, forcing him to stop and face her.

"You were engaged to her the whole time we were together, weren't you?" It wasn't a question. "I can't decide who's the bigger fool, me for trusting you or her for waiting for you!" Fiona's temper flared hot.

Michael looked around quickly, obviously uncomfortable with the amount of attention they were attracting. "I always wanted to tell you. I was just waiting for the right time."

"And when was it even gonna be the right time, Michael? When Charlie showed up to invite you to his college graduation party? It wasn't the right time when we met. It wasn't the right time when we started dating. It wasn't the right time when we started working together. It wasn't the right time when I let ya inta me bed and inta me heart. Why it warn't even tha right time when I moved ta Miami, wa' it?

The enraged ex-guerilla paused and sucked in a huge breath, her chest heaving as she tried to bring her anger and her accent back under control and failing miserably at both. The former operative slapped her lover hard across the face, the impact making a loud crack and snapping his head to the side _._

" _Be grateful it warn't me fist!"_ Fiona fumed internally, as the red tinge was slowly leaving her vision _._

"No, it wa' tha right time ta tell me when she showed up on yar front step, thot abou' right?" she gibed.

The fiery Irish woman didn't expect an answer from the dark haired man, who was holding the side of his face and staring wide-eyed at her.

"I'll find me own way home," she declared, spinning on her heels and marching away.

 _How dare he? He was engaged_ to her _the whole time_ they _were together. The lying sonuvabith! He'd made her think he wanted to be with her, cared about her and he was engaged to someone else the whole fecking time! Maybe he'd even had a child by her… How could he father another woman's child?_

The wellspring of outrage dried up in a heartbeat and Fiona staggered so badly that she almost fell to her knees on the hard ground as the realization exploded into her consciousness like a shotgun blast.

 _She could be carrying another man's child!_

It had been mere weeks between Campbell informing her that he wasn't her boyfriend anymore and Michael, lost, hurt and soaking wet, carrying her from the barstool in the kitchen into the shower.

 _She was judging Michael about a child that might not even be his while she could be the one who was guilty of sleeping with him, of wanting to be with him and all that time being pregnant by the paramedic._

She turned the corner out of his line of sight and fled towards the taxi stand as fast as she could run.

 _She had to get to the doctor's office now!_

()()()()()

Much later that afternoon, Mr Westen sat at the Carlito's, staring at the three empty glasses of iced tea on the table before him contemplating the images that he consumed his mind while he had consumed each of the beverages. The things that haunted him usually involved death and destruction… mayhem and loss of life that he had caused in the service of his country.

But now, other things, things he usually managed to keep locked away where such things that troubled him could not, these things were preying on his mind and his heart.

" _You had something to propose?" he'd asked as they lain in bed, both successful on their mission and sated afterwards. Working with Samantha, sleeping with Samantha had been so easy until that second._

" _Yes, I'm proposing," she had agreed, watching to see when or if what she was saying had sunk in. "Marry me, Michael."_

 _As she had enumerated all of the shallow, superficial reasons why their personal partnership could be an extension of their professional relationship, he had thought he'd found the perfect arrangement._

" _Well, when you put it that way," he had responded at length, pushing her over onto her back before returning her kiss. "Why not?"_

He shook his head as he sipped on his fourth drink. How different that memory was from the last time he'd seen her, two years after that, after eighteen of the most exciting, blissful, confusing, explosive, agonizing months of his entire life. At the end of it, he had tried to take Fiona with him, but the world had conspired to keep them apart and that had left him something to do in the summer of 1999.

 _He was just going to collect his things in the dead of night and tell her goodbye in the morning. But she'd caught him in the bathroom in the darkness and he'd taken her right there on the floor, giving in to his pain and his need at her expense. He didn't love her, but he shouldn't have done what he had._

And if he hadn't, he wouldn't be sitting here, hiding out from the two women in his life who were both furious with him at the moment, wondering if that indiscretion might have been catalyst for a whole series of unknown events. He wondered if there were others, as he absently rubbed the glass of cool liquid across his abraded cheek. It was a wonder that Samantha hadn't struck him, except she was too shell-shocked at the time and physical violence was Fiona's stock in trade, not his former fiancée's.

But the look of utter astonishment on the brunette's face had been nothing compared to the depths of hurt and betrayal that he been in those blue green eyes he knew so well. How many times could he reasonably expect her to forgive him for lying to her, intentionally in service of his country, as well as unintentionally when his mouth wrote checks that his heart wanted to cash, but his mind, his job and his circumstances would never allow to be tendered, until the night he thought he'd lost her to the fire.

All the boxes had spilled open then and now, as he had seen her walk away and almost fall to her knees.

He had seen her roaring drunk, murderously angry, devastatingly hurt, wretched sick, in a the heat of battle, in the throes of passion or acting that role undercover, but he'd never seen her almost crumble.

And he had been the cause of it. He had wanted her in his future and he had hurt her due to his past.

Michael let out a long sigh and set the empty glass down on the table. He had no clue how to fix this. He had a somewhat better idea of what to do about his little homicidal former rodeo clown problem. The irony of that fact was not lost on him and the ex-spy was very relieved to see Sam walking up with some intel that would help in deal with the problem that he could do something about.

()()()()()()

Fiona Glenanne was frantic.

She stalked around her bedroom, shooting murderous glares at the half dozen of blue and white sticks lined up neatly on her sink every time she moved past the doorway to the bathroom. Every one of those traitorous little pieces of plastic had failed to give her the answer she needed. She chambered the weapon in her shaking hand and pointed at the sink yet again before retreating to her bed to make the HK safe again for another one of a dozen times.

She had already gone to the range once today, after leaving the doctor's office without getting what she wanted. The medico was not there… apparently a large number of her clients were involved in a drive-by shooting and the woman had made a house call, backed up by her husband and brothers. The only one left in the building was the doctor's mother, a short, stout female who reminded her of Trini Delaney in her appearance and taste for jewelry and of her Auntie Claire in her build and personality.

" _They ain't here an' ya can be wavin' that gun at me all ya like, girl. it ain't gonna getcha what ya want, missy! Here…" The dark woman had shoved a bag of Clear Blue test sticks at her. "Go home and mind yar business and come back later tomorra."_

That had been worth ten boxes of ammo at her favorite gun range for her H&K and her Hectate. But all the calm she had gained from that trip to the Everglades had vanished after the first test taken.

She stormed back into the bathroom. Looking down at the little windows on the slender pieces of plastic, determined that by the weight of her stare she would change the results, but to no avail.

3+ Weeks pregnant, it said… They all did.

 _Not 1…_

 _Not 1 -2 weeks…_

Either of those would have meant it was Michael's baby she was carrying inside her.

 _But 3+weeks pregnant..._ that could be Michael was the father … _right at 3 weeks_.

Or it could mean that Campbell was the father at anything over that….

Fiona breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth… She was feeling dizzy and nauseous again. She had no idea what to do, how to calm herself or what she should do not to go insane while she was awaiting the answer to that incredibility critical question.

Suddenly, her knees began to tremble and it was all she could do to make it back to the bed before she collapsed on the comfort of her bed. She pulled the pillow, the one that still retained a small trace of his scent, into her embrace as she drew her legs up and began to sob uncontrollably.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** _This is the fourth part of the 3.01 premiere AU that was originally posted as Chapter 16 in "Puppies, Kittens and Gun Toting Babies."_

 _()()()()()()_

 **3.01 – The Enemy of My Enemy – Part 4**

 _An alternate for Season Three and beyond following on from_ _2.11 – Hot Spot_

 _()()()()()()_

 _Miami 2009_

No matter how hard she tried to fight it, she couldn't stop crying. Of all the things she expected to bring her pain in her life, not knowing who the father of her baby might be was not something she was prepared to deal with by temperament or experience. How had this happened to her? Then she remembered. She had missed her Depo shot in the craziness when Michael had almost gotten blown up.

While the hormone-fueled misery was passing, she thought about her time with Campbell. He was sweet and cute, as she had told Michael, and he did have some very impressive qualities. Although she really regretted sleeping with him _now,_ at the time it had seemed like the right thing. She'd told herself that she needed to just get over the dark haired ex-spy once and for all. Obviously what they'd had in the past wasn't important enough to him to let go of his other past. Fiona wanted someone who wanted her all the time, not just when they needed a tactical favor or someone to get them through the night.

Campbell had seemed like that someone. Unlike the other men she had dated and sometimes bedded after Michael had disappeared from her life only to drop in again periodically, the paramedic was genuinely kind hearted and caring. He was an EMT because he wanted to help people and when they were together, she was the center of his universe. That kind of dedicated attention had felt so good. Plus, he cooked for her and he really was good in bed, almost as good as her former "Irish" lover.

Fiona swiped a hand over her eyes and turned the tear stained pillow over. As she lie there, she knew what the problem was. She had wanted those things, but she had wanted them from Michael. And what was worse, she had treated her new lover the same way she'd been furious with her old lover for treating her: asking for favors, cancelling on a moment's notice, always putting something else first.

" _You and Mike, I know you have a history. But he's your boyfriend. Not me."_

" _No, he's not. You're –"-_

" _I'm a guy you fool around with and you borrow ambulances from. He's the most important thing in your life_." As if to prove his point, the phone had rung to signal her it was time to proceed with their plans. _"That's him, isn't it? You know, it's okay. I know you're always gonna answer when he calls_."

How had she not seen it before? She'd been kidding herself all along. She clutched the pillow she'd been hugging to her body even tighter. She'd abandoned Campbell at breakfast to help Michael save Jeannie Anderson. When he'd staggered towards them after the ex-spy had deliberately let the pickup he was driving be rammed by a dump truck to save her life and Jeanne's, she had raced across the black top to gather him into her arms. Fiona remembered being at Michael's place at 3 AM, ostensibly to provide tactical support, but she watched and listened to "Brad" talking to their mark, Lesher, quoting Proverbs 27:17 about iron sharpening iron and so man sharpens another man. He'd said that was them; that he had shown him the way and, although he was talking to the other man, she knew who he meant. _Don't you see I'm not afraid? I'm not afraid anymore. I'm not afraid of death. I'm not afraid of anything._

But he was hurt and he _was_ afraid of something besides death and it was written all over his face what he couldn't say to her directly. She was dating Campbell, she was sleeping with Campbell, but as she'd walked over to the chair and taken his hands, as she'd led him to the bed and they'd lain down together, while she was comforting her best friend, and truly that's all it was, in her heart she was wishing that there had been a way for there to be more between them. Why was it so hard for them to be together?

 _No use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave? If you come back, come back for the sake of good fellowship; for you'll get nothing else._

She remembered the line from Shaw. How Eliza had married Freddie, a pleasant but unremarkable fellow who adored her, but had kept her friendship with Higgins, the man she truly loved, but who would in no way have been marriageable material. _Was that their fate? That she loved him vicariously?_

Fiona slowly rolled off the bed and walked into the bathroom. There was nothing to do until she found out whose child it was. Though she had no idea how she could possibly make a life with Campbell, she knew that she could never ask or expect Michael to raise another man's child. She wasn't even sure she could get Michael to agree to raise his own child, especially if Charlie was in fact his own offspring.

Ms Glenanne pushed all the test strips into the garbage with a sweep of her hand and then disrobed. There was no point in worrying about this any further. She didn't worry, she acted. They had a job to do tomorrow and lying around blubbering about it wasn't going to change a thing! She let the water run over her and wash her concerns away. She'd deal with it when she knew what she was dealing with!

()()()()()()

The next day had not gone as planned. Brennan, the sneaky SOB that he was, had strapped an explosive to the kid and they had had to let the arms dealer go. She had played nice with everyone involved until she'd been tasked with getting the bomb off the little boy. Then she'd had an enormous amount of difficulty in restraining herself from going straight from the park to the bastard's condo and returning the device to him personally. Fiona had taken a detour by the doctor's office on her way back to the loft and was requested to return as soon as convenient for additional blood tests for a basis of comparison.

Ms. Glenanne still had time to get back to the loft and campaign to for an armed assault on Brennen's condo before Michael arrived. The next thing she knew, she was getting part of her wish. They were headed to the man's residence, but sadly she was not going to be allowed to blow him up.

They had ridden in silence for the first few miles before Michiael finally broke the stillness with her name and a short apology and she had told him they would talk about it later, that the job came first. She'd been treated to a set of raised eyebrows for that remark. So Fiona reminded him that it was only because there was a child involved that the job took priority over them settling matters between them.

"Charlie's not mine," he added after another moment of quiet.

"She told you that to begin with," Fiona pointed out reasonably. "Although her trust worthiness is not—

"She was just leaving the possibility out there to make sure we helped her."

"We would have helped her regardless. Guess she didn't know you as well as she thought she did." The Irish woman looked at his profile. _How well did_ she _really know him?_ _Every time she thought she knew who he really was, there was another surprise_. "What if he had been?"

"Excuse me?" He didn't return her stare.

"What if Charlie had been yours?"

Michael licked his lips and continued to watch the road ahead of him.

"I don't know," he responded at length. "I'm just—"

"Thankful that he's not…?" Fiona finished for him.

"Something like that," the dark haired man agreed. The look on his face as he finally turned to her was soft and gentle, but like he was pleased not to be a father and, even more so, like he was happy not to be Charlie's sire in particular. It confused her and she smiled back out of habit more than sincerity.

 _Should she tell him? Tell him what? That he might be the Da and then again it might be Campbell's?_ No, this was not the time for such a discussion. Once Samantha and the chip were gone, once she knew for sure whose child it was she was carrying, then they would talk.

Exchanging barbs with Brennan, while trying to convince him that he needed their help to keep the chip from being stolen back by Ms. Keyes, had been far less painful than the lunch at Carlito's between the three of them. Watching Samantha flirt with Michael had set her teeth on edge. She almost breathed a sigh of relief when Carla showed up to take the ex-spy for another meeting in her long, black limo.

"Oh, Michael's other woman beckons," she sing-songed as he stood up to leave.

"I never actually thought I'd look forward to this. Excuse me…"

"Oh, Michael, you forgot something," Samantha called as he went to pass by her, still seated at the table. The brunette laughed as she handled her former fiancé his wallet back. Then she looked at Ms. Glenanne smugly as the Irishwoman took a long sip of her drink.

"It's just a little game the two of us used to play," she explained as he fled, looking completely uncomfortable with leaving the two of the together, but obviously not wanting to stay and referee.

"It's charming." She had to admit the practicality of keeping up ones skills, but the smirk that went with it made her nauseous. She was starting to wonder if the woman from Mr. Westen's past was actually planning on leaving.

"Are you and Michael-?"

"No," Fiona said flatly and a beat too quick. She had no intention of discussing the actual status of her relationship to Michael with his ex-fiancée. If Samantha wanted to know where she stood, she could take it up with Michael herself.

"Hmmm…" Clearly Ms. Keyes did not believe her. The waitress brought another round of drinks and the redhead preoccupied herself with pretending to decide on what to eat. When the server left, she looked at the one-time premiere thief of Moscow, trying to decide if she really wanted the answer.

"Go ahead," the pale woman said with a shrug. "Ask me. It's all history, anyway."

"Did he tell you goodbye?"

That was evidently not what she was expecting to hear.

"He never actually said those words," Samantha sighed. "But he made it very clear it was over."

Ms. Glenanne's look obviously implied that she would like more details without having to ask for them.

"The CIA brought me in to do a job for them and he was my contact. I did jobs for them for about a year with him. The last job we did together was in 1997, New Years Eve to be exact. I proposed to him that night." The other woman was lost in thought for a moment. "Then he got re-assigned. I saw him on and off for a few months. Then he was hurt, almost killed from what I could gather… The Agency… well, they're not exactly chatty types unless they want something."

Fiona snorted. She'd had more than enough of being lied to and manipulated by the CIA and its agents.

"He was gone for two years after that." And it was evident Samantha was filling in the blanks as to who Michael had been with while he was on assignment. "He came back, told me he was sorry and it was over. He left and I never saw him again after that."

Fiona did the math in her head. Michael must have done more than say sorry and goodbye if a nine year old Charlie, which the boy obviously wasn't that old, could have potentially been his son. That got her thinking about what Mr. Westen had done after leaving her in Ireland and about the encounters she'd had with the spy over the decade in between his leaving her, and Samantha apparently, and meeting up with him again after the urgent phone call from Jack Tracey's wife, Colleen, in that cheap hotel room.

"Did he tell you goodbye?"

 _Which time?_ The petite woman thought sadly, but she was spared having to make a reply when she got a text to meet him back at Brennan's place. They were on to "help" him test the chip.

()()()()() .

There were times when being a man was downright uncomfortable.

Having your mother stay at your place was one of them.

Having your ex-fiancé around your ex-girlfriend was another.

Having the two of them within three feet of you and each other with your mother around who was staying at your place was the trifecta of uncomfortable situations. They were standing at the bar reviewing the next phase of their plan to separate Tyler Brennan from the guidance chip at the airport hangar he had chosen to conduct the sale of said stolen technology. They had to get it away from Brennan and back where it belonged or Charlie was facing growing up in a hut in Nicaragua.

"We're going to have a lot of eyes on us, but we might be able to sneak in some special construction materials," he concluded, pleased that this was going so smoothly despite the potential for trouble.

"Like we did in Dublin," she smiled warmly, memories of liberating supplies from the demolition company and other things clearly on her face.

"Yeah…" he agreed with a grin.

"She talking about that thing you and I did in St Peterburg?" Samantha cut in.

"Yeah…" Michael confirmed, his manhood remembered it as well as he did, until the shift in the atmosphere left both of them longing for an exit strategy. This was trouble on the horizon for sure.

"I should take this," he advised before retreating to the balcony. It was one of the rare times he was grateful for a cell phone interruption.

"And I'm gonna leave... _now_."

Fiona apparently could only take so much of Ms. Keyes' attempts to reintegrate herself into Michael's life. He had noticed it, but did his best to ignore it as much as possible. His mother's presence in the loft, however uncomfortable, had saved him for a far worse fate: Samantha's renewed interest in _them_.

" _Well, you are an enigma wrapped in a schizophrenic, aren't you, sport? First, you don't shoot at me and then you set up a little firing squad."_ The voice on the phone sounded as though its owner was poolside.

Dealing with Victor was almost a pleasure compared to be caught in the middle of three women, all of whom seemed intent on getting his attention one way or another.

"I needed help selling a cover ID, nothing personal."

The operative laughed, sounding slightly unhinged. " _Oh, we do have some fun, don't we? I really do wanna get together. How soon can we do this?"_

"If you give me until Friday, I think I've got a way to make sure guns stay out of the equation."

Michael was sure he'd rather have Mr. Steckler-Epps take another shot at him than have to face the estrogen squad. He had half a thought about sneaking off to see Fiona, but realized that he needed to keep an eye on his mother and Samantha. He could already hear them talking about him inside the loft.

How had an operative of his caliber ended up eavesdropping on his mom and ex-fiancé in his own home in order to gather enough intel to know whether or not it was safe to come into the room? He sighed.

()()()()

It was dark by the time he'd gotten back to the loft that next day. Thanks to Sam's quick improvising, they had blown the sale and gotten the chip off Brennan, who had threatened to hunt Michael down and kill him if the ex-spy didn't return said stolen tech before said stuff was discovered missing, and thanks to Samantha's skills in the art of acquisitions, the brains for the UAV drones was back in its place like it had never left home. Ms. Keyes was now on her way back to Chicago to reclaim her son and get out of the high-end burglary business, or so he'd told her to do. Whether she did was another matter.

His attention diverged onto many topics on his drive back to the loft from the airport, but they all had one focal point, or basis for comparison. It had been easy working with Samantha again. They had fallen back into the rhyme established in their prior jobs, even though it had been a decade since he'd worked with her, their banter had changed little over that time. But the scripted nature of their work conversations really stood out now that he'd had a taste of living the life of Riley, as it were, in Ireland.

There was no doubt that as she'd shinnied out of her clothes and into her bunny suit for the clean room that the pale brunette was still _attractive_ , but there was no _attraction_ for him other than the visual any man would appreciate and the vague echoes of relations past. Even when she had kissed him goodbye, the feelings were strictly a slight sense of nostalgia and a moment of being pleased that at least she didn't hate him for what he had done. She would've had every right to do so and he'd accepted that.

But Samantha's attempts to re-engage him had fallen flat. The thief had a child and a life that should no longer involve being in the trade. It was in her, and her son's, best interest to leave that profession and settle down to something more stable, or at least less dangerous. She really needed to put her boy first.

So, as he walked into the loft and he acknowledged his mom asleep on his bed, his attention quickly drawn toward the real reason that Samantha Keyes no longer had any meaning in his life. The petite woman was leaning against the doorframe that led onto the balcony, looking breathtaking underneath the lunar illumination that reflected off her skin as well as her white tank top and shorts.

"Did it go alright?" she called as Michael walked towards her, pausing momentarily to pull the covers up higher over his mother's supposedly slumbering form. He was pretty sure Madeline was awake.

"Yeah, it's over now," he agreed as he came along side her, unbuttoning his sleeves as he went.

"Well, it's late. I should go." Fiona seemed in a hurry to leave.

"Wait."

The Irish woman sighed. "Whatever you're gonna say, it's-it's in the past."

Her tone was dismissive, but her expression plainly was not, even in the low light. It was almost as if she knew what he was going to tell her already.

"It is and it isn't, Fi." He fiddled with the buttons at his wrists and stared out at the moon while he spoke. "Sam and I worked because she was like me. She didn't mind that my job was lying to people. She loved it. She did the same thing. We lied to each other all the time too. It was just another game with her. It made being with her easy. And then I met you."

His voice dropped the light airy tone and became serious. "It was- it was different. It was _never_ easy. You knew a part of me she never did," Michael looked at her then and smiled softly. Her eyes were wide with wonder, as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"The part of me that no one knows but you," he admitted. "I wanted to take you with me when I left Ireland." Her lover reached out and laid his large palm along her face. "I wanted you to come with me, but your brothers and CIA wouldn't allow it. I left because I thought if I stayed that you'd be killed."

Those blue green eyes of hers were bright with unshed tears that sparkled in the moonlight.

"And then I left her because you don't marry someone when you love somebody else."

He leaned in to kiss her then and she melted into his embrace. Tiny rivlets of moisture ran along his cheeks falling from hers and her arms snaked up his back and caressed his shoulder blades. The kiss became more demanding and the embrace more ardent as they forgot everything and everyone.

Until Madeline rolled over and coughed, that is.

Fiona laughed lightly and gave him a watery smile. "Come on outside," she urged. "I need to tell you something in private," finishing on a whisper as she leaned in close to his ear.

Curiosity piqued, they slipped out the door and onto the balcony, closing the wooden barriers behind them securely. He gestured towards the recently acquired pair of loungers on the concrete deck. They perched of the ends of each of them, facing each other, knees touching as he took her trembling hands into his own larger ones and laid their entwined digits on top of their legs.

"What's going on, Fi?" he asked with a nervous chuckle. "Why are you shaking?"

"I'm not sure you're ready to hear what I have to say...and I'm not sure I'm ready to say it."

"Then I'm guessing it doesn't fire, explode or go from zero to a hundred in less than sixty seconds, but I'm sure we can deal with whatever it is."

"Do you remember how you felt when you thought Charlie might be your son?"

Well, that wasn't what he was expecting. He knew she'd noticed Samantha flirting with him, but he assumed she had also seen him ignoring her. He thought the fact that the brunette had gone and he was still here with her said everything that needed to be discussed on that topic.

"Yes, but he wasn't," and Michael let out another breath of relief that he hadn't abandoned a child he'd know nothing about. "She's gone and she's not coming back."

"That's not the point, Michael," she huffed a bit, her nerves making her irritable. "What would you have done if you'd found out that Charlie was yours?"

"Whatever I could, I suppose…" he trailed off. "It would have been too dangerous for me to be around him right now with Victor in the wind and Carla and her organization breathing down my neck."

For a hypothetical situation, Fiona was getting awfully upset. She squeezed his hands firmly and locked her jaw before gritting out through clenched teeth, "So you'd just turn your back on him then?"

"No, Fi, no… I would make sure he was protected, as safe as he could be."

She tried to stand up and pull her hands from his grasp, but he wouldn't allow it. As he got to his feet, it all coalesced in his mind… her fatigue, her wariness around him, the overly emotional, even for her, response to things, her continual questions about his ex-fiancé's child and her jealousy of Samantha.

 _Her nearly collapsing in front of him in Bayfront Park the day he'd confessed about his engagement._

Michael sucked in a breath between his teeth and asked in a low voice, "How long have you known?"

"For a little while now…" she confessed, staring at their joined hands which were both shaking now.

He released her hands and put his two palms to either side of her face, tilting her head up and forcing their eyes to meet.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he pleaded, a myriad of emotions in his voice.

Tears started to spill from her eyes and onto his fingers.

"Because of the job… because of Samantha… because of Charlie…because I didn't know who…"

It took another minute to hear what she wasn't saying

"oh, Fiona…"

The pain in her voice had been more than he could take. The disappointment that she'd let herself carry the burden all alone, the anger at himself for the grief that he had caused her so that she thought she couldn't be honest with him about something like this because he'd pushed her away, time and again.

But she very plainly had misinterpreted his feelings when she jerked away from him, almost stumbling over the lounge chair as she'd tried to back away from him, angry water now flowing down her face.

"Do you think I wanted to be with him? Do you think I ever wanted to be with _any_ of them? _You left me, Michael!_ You're always leaving me behind. You say you wouldn't marry Samantha because you loved me, but you left without a word and you left her, too. How was I going to tell you about your baby, when I didn't even know if it _was your baby_? Because I was with him, because you didn't want me for anything but tactical support and because you shove me away every time we get close to—"

The Irish woman stopped talking and crying simultaneously and swung at him as hard as she could.

Fortunately for Michael, he had decades of practice sparring with her and knew what was coming. He captured her flying fist and spun her around into a tight embrace, just as he had the day he'd come back from his first assignment, standing below the stairs and trying to wash up Sam's prized Cadillac.

"Let go of me!" she demanded, struggling against his grip, but not yet lashing out or kicking.

"No, Fi, no…" He held her even tighter. "Fi…Fiona…listen to me, Fi… Fiona Glenanne! Listen to me!"

All the fight went out of her in an instant and she sagged against him. "It's your baby, Michael," she sobbed, "It's your baby and it doesn't matter because you don't want—"

"I don't care whose baby it is. I love _you_ , Fiona Glenanne, and I want to be _with you_ and I'm sorry for what I've put you through over the years. I'm sorry I couldn't just be Michael McBride for you and I'm sorry I couldn't take you with me then. And I'm sorry it took me thinking you had died to realize that."

He used his superior height and strength to pick her up off the ground enough to move back over to the lounger and straddle it before sinking down into the padding with not a lot of grace. As he settled her against his body, he shifted until her legs were laid out on the deck chair between his and her upper body was settled against his chest, her head lay against his shoulder and tucked underneath his chin.

Fiona continued to sniffle quietly while he held her. "What are we going to do now?"

He thought about his lecture earlier in the day to Samantha about putting Charlie's welfare first.

"We'll figure out the rest of it tomorrow," he said quietly. "Tonight is just you and me."

And so it was, as they lie wrapped in each other's embrace underneath the moonlight that bathed the Miami sky until the sun came up.

()()()()()()()

 _Gulf of Mexico 2009_

For all the times that she had berated Michael for wanting to engage Mr. Steckler-Epps instead of putting a bullet in him, Fiona was so very grateful he hadn't listened to her as the other burned spy in her life at the moment had stepped up and pushed her out of harm's way.

And he had taken the bullet, or rather bullets, for her instead.

As she lie trapped under his wounded body, her head aching where the back of her skull had cracked onto the boat deck, she felt assured that Victor would have taken the tradeoff of dying for the opportunity to take out Carla in a blaze of up close and personal gunfire.

"Finally…" he whispered in her ear, a true sense of satisfaction in his last words.

She could hear Mr. Westen's panicked shouts, but she couldn't get the air necessary to answer him and she sort of drifted in a haze while her head swam and the weight of her one-time enemy held her down.

Three days earlier, she had woken up in a similar fog, feeling utterly drained enough to need the sleep, but barely comfortable enough to really get any as she had found herself alone on the couch in the upper landing of the loft. She'd had a vague memory then of Michael carrying her up there sometime in the early morning hours after spending the night with him in an lounger out on the balcony.

She'd heard an electronic buzzing and then heard him yelp in pain. _Working on that camera taser…_

Madeline's voice and then her son's had washed over her briefly and then on past ...

 _I have a meeting to get to. If it goes well, you can go home…_

 _I-I know I shouldn't have been eavesdropping last night…._

 _I'm scared, Mom. I don't know what to do…._

 _What you always do, honey, you do the right thing…._

Had she been conscious enough at the time to know the ex-spy had left to go to the meeting he had set up with the psychopathic former operative in the men's bathroom of Miami City Hall, she probably would have been outraged that he had gone off without back-up again.

As it was though all the emotional strain she'd been under had rewarded her with an unusually long and deep sleep once she had been relocated to his bed under the watchful eye of Madeline Westen.

When his mother had awoken her favorite daughter to let her know that Sam was waiting for her at an abandoned concrete plant out in the wilds of western Dade County, she had left the loft feeling better than she had in weeks. She was more than ready for her assignment to guard Victor to make sure he stayed inside his improvised prison cell while Mr Westen was off meeting the face of the organization.

And while she had never thought she would have sympathy for the man who had tried to kill Michael repeatedly, she had found herself being drawn in by what had happened to him. Of course, she hadn't believed the story, however plausible, of a bad op, a murdered family and a burn notice, only to discover that Carla's had been responsible for the slaughter of Victor's family as part of her recruiting techniques.

After she had pelted him with a couple bean bag rounds to ensure their captive's compliance, she and Michael had made their way onto his booby-trapped boat at the end of Randall Key and had found the evidence which turned her opinion about the other burned spy and escalated the desire to shoot Carla.

 _Spies are supposed to travel light with nothing that could identify them. Some do, but most find that staying sane requires staying connected to something that reminds them why they do what they do. Pictures are particularly dangerous to carry unless the people in them are already dead._

" _Michael, his little boy was only four. Who knew you could feel this bad for a psychopath on the edge of sanity?" she said as she flipped through the pictures of the Steckler-Epps family who were no more. That and a steady diet of spam and Captain Crunch would be enough to send anyone over the brink…_

" _People don't get there on their own, Fi," he reminded her gently. "Being under Carla's thumb, it's a strain. Having everyone turn their back on you, treating you like your some kind of monster for—"_

" _You're not a monster, Michael," she countered, taking his hand firmly. "You've done all right."_

" _Only because I've had you and Sam to help me, because I -I never lost- everyone I cared about."_

He had pulled her to her feet and wrapped her in a tight embrace. Fiona had enfolded his waist in her arms and laid her cheek over his thudding heart.

" _This can't be us, Fi. I couldn't stand it if something happened to you, to the baby…" He squeezed her tighter. "You shouldn't be here. You should take my mom and go—"_

" _Michael," she said patiently, "Victor's family was killed because they couldn't take care of themselves and he wasn't there to protect them, he was gone on a mission. I can take care of meself and I am better off with you around to watch my back than I am alone with your mom." She reached up and kissed the underside of his jaw near his ear. "And you need me to watch your back, too. That's what Victor didn't have, that's what made him what he is today. Now, no more talk about running away."_

And though he'd sent her off to go her meeting instead of sticking together like they had discussed, in the end, she'd had to agree with his tactics. As it turned out, they had needed every bit of the C-4, det cord and extra weapons she had picked up that day. Just a reminder of what happened when people crossed her was all she needed to get better prices on the ordinance than a fire sale at Bloomingdale's.

Mining the road to blow at strategic intervals just as she had done on that driveway past an abandoned factory back in Belfast where they had first met as operatives had her feeling a bit nostalgic as well as super confident. She'd decided she was past accepting Victor and actually starting to like him as he had stared at her in wonder and demanded to know where Michael had met her after that brilliant demonstration of her explosives expertise. She liked a man that could appreciate a quality detonation.

It had been his agreement with Michael over how best to take on their handler and hold the higher up's at bay that'd had her questioning the sanity of both the burned spies as they'd stood in a little patch of woods overlooking Victor's super-secret stash, a false high voltage box on a lonely looking utility pole.

" _Blackmail…? That's the idea? We're doing all this so we can throw some paper work at Carla?"_

" _It's the smart play here. We're outgunned," Mr. Westen pointed out._

" _We'll get bigger guns. I can't believe what I'm hearing. I saw what she did to you and your family," she rounded on Victor. "If the file is so great, then why didn't you use it before?_

" _This isn't just about her. I want the guys who call the shots. The file was just in case, enough to force her to back off. If this was just about putting a bullet in Carla, it would have been over a long time ago._

" _Still, putting a bullet in Carla sounds awfully good," Fiona declared._

" _I like the way you think," Victor concurred. "But if comes to that, you'll have to get in line."_

But it had come to that. As her vision started to clear, she saw the bright blue skies over the Gulf of Mexico and she whispered her thanks to the man who could no longer hear her, the one who had insisted, along with Michael, that she take the only bullet proof vest on the boat and don it underneath one of his shirts, the man who had stood up for her when Michael had tried to leave her for her safety.

" _Carla's entire work history…This is pretty damming stuff. You think you can play this card?"_

 _Michael had the file they had succeeded in snatching right out from under the organization's nose, turning the pages he had laid out on the hood of her Saab where they had parked down by the docks._

" _When we get back to my boat, I've got the codes and com lines to go above her head," the older man answered the dark haired ex-spy. "If she knows I can get to them with this, she'll have to back off fast."_

" _Then we get out of town, maybe to Cuba."_

" _Fabulous… great music…. Lots of sexy unemployed men…" she smiled at the pair of them._

" _Fi, can I talk to you for a sec?" He took hold of her arm and started to lead her away._

" _I'm not invited to Cuba?" She planted her feet and refused to move, glaring at him and resisting the urge to knock the daylights out of him. "Tell me, Michael, exactly how many contacts do you have in the gun running community? In the black market? In Cuba? How many people can get you a boat with a phone call? How do you plan on calling for back-up in the middle of the Gulf?"_

" _Fi, please, I need you to—" But the other burned spy had cut him off, laying a hand on his shoulder._

" _I don't know what's going on in that pretty little head of yours, sport, but you are crazier than I am to leave this little filly in the barn, especially when Carla's just going to go and blow up the barn."_

" _They're gonna find us with all they have," Michael protested._

" _All the more reason to have her around," Victor countered. "We get Carla to follow us out to sea and she'll spend all her resources trying to run us down before Management gets wind of what's going on."_

" _Sam's already got your Mom stashed in Orlando, Michael. Do you really want me on the Florida Turnpike by myself chasing after them with Carla's minions running around?"_

And Mr. Westen hadn't been able to argue with that logic. After a couple of quick phone calls and some serious firepower loaded onto the boat, they had departed Randall Key in no short amount of time before the murderous woman in question had turned up the assault vehicles and helicopters.

Fiona smiled as she heard Michael's footsteps rushing towards her on the deck upon which she lay.

She smiled at the memory of getting to use an RPG again. It had been a long time and she had never had the opportunity to shoot down a chopper with one, though she had wanted to many times. Watching Carla's only means of tracking go down in a fiery blaze into the ocean had been most gratifying.

"Fi, can you hear me?" Dread had hitched his voice up an octave. "Fi, Fiona, are you alright? Fi…?"

The body of Mr. Steckler-Epps was rolled off of her none-too-gently and Michael had her in his arms.

"Jesus, Fi, at that caliber, you still could have— oh my God," he moaned as he saw all the blood.

"Don't worry. It's his. Victor saved me," she said dreamily, still a little disoriented. "Carla surprised me coming out of the hole, but he got in front of me and he shot her… more than once…"

Fiona turned her head as much as she could in his embrace. The former guerilla could see the mass of blonde hair soaking up the carnage of Carla's ruined head, the rest of the corpse out of view.

She heard him suck in a breath as he was pulling the shirt that covered the vest off. "That was too close. The impact could- I gotta get you outta here now!"

He sat her up and ripped the vest off her and tossed it over board. Fiona didn't hear a splash and shook her head, trying to get her bearings. The two boats that had pursued them were in ruins. One was on fire and the other had blood and bullet holes all over it, which was causing it to slowly take on water.

He loaded her into the Zodiac as carefully as he could before flying away from the scene. The Irish woman remembered admiring the explosion as Victor's boat blew into a million pieces and sent a cloud of flames and smoke into the air. It was a fitting end to the day's efforts.

()()()()()()()

 _Isla Mujeres 2009_

"You're sure she's okay?" he demanded.

"Your wife and child are going to be fine, Mr. Finley… don't worry. As long as she rests properly and has no more excitement, the pregnancy should progress as normal."

"She's gonna be fine, Peter…"

Michael blew out a long breathe and hung his head as Sam's large hand landed on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry about my brother here, Dr. Zedillo. Sometimes he gets excited and forgets his manners."

"No, it is fine. Please, call me Pilar. It is good to see a man so concerned for his family."

She handed a card to Michael as he raised his head and reached out to shake her hand.

"You may call me any time, Mr. Finley, if you have any questions. She will be fine as long as you don't take any more fishing trips." the dark haired beauty smiled at him warmly. "And you, too, Senor Charles, you should be talking your brother into more quiet pursuits."

"I think you can count on that," Sam agreed. "Chuck and Peter Finley, land lubbers."

"Thank you, doctor," the dark haired ex-spy said with complete sincerity and turned to follow her down the corridor to where Fiona was dressing. The slender Mexican woman kept walking and Michael hesitated outside the door, listening for a moment. Then he knocked.

"You decent, Charlotte?" he called out.

"She's never decent," Sam chuckled.

"I heard that!" There was more shuffling in the room and then the door opened. A nurse stood to one side and let them in before departing. Fiona was sitting on the small hospital bed in an over sized blue sundress, her long auburn hair in braids, her feet bare and a pair of sandals on the floor beside the bed.

Michael had never seen a more beautiful sight in his entire life.

"Charlotte Finely," she snipped as the pair approached the bed. "Really…?"

"You're just lucky I had those on hand and ready to go on short notice, sister. Just imagine what I could come up with if I'd really had time to work on it," he laughed at her pique.

"Is my mom okay?" Michael queried, moving to stand next to 'Mrs. Finely' and then laying an arm around her shoulder. "Did she get off to South Carolina okay?"

"Your ma's in the happy embrace of her sister, Jill. She should be fine. Her nephew made federal marshal last month. I don't think they're gonna wanna risk that kind of exposure just for revenge, especially now that Carla's sleepin' with the fishes and they've gotten a look at her play book. I mean, hell, they blew up your mom's house for chris' sakes; there's not a lot of damage left to do. "

"With a little help from her friends," Fiona smirked.

"Yeah, well," Mr Axe laughed. "Who knew you could get so much mileage out of gun powder and non-dairy creamer? She was pissed at you about having to replace everything until her sister reminded her of all the shopping she gets to do now. The insurance money should keep her in cigarettes for a while."

"Are you sure you're okay?" Michael asked softly, rubbing her arm as he inquired about her health. "You could have had a miscarriage from the impact of falling on the boat deck and someone falling on you and then the gunfire that-"

"I'm fine. The doctor says I just have to take it easy and let my body heal." She petted his hand. "We have tough DNA… It'll be fine."

"So, you two… about to be married and a kid on the way… man, that calls for a mojito, or ten actually!"

"Did your Coast Guard buddies verify the wreckage?" Michael asked, never quite taking his eyes off her.

"Yep, as much as they could, that is. Victor's boat sank on its own. Carla's clean-up crew made sure the other two joined it at the bottom of ocean. Made sure none of the bodies were going to come floating up again either. No, I'd say you were in the clear. Even if they think you're alive, I don't think they're going to come nosing around looking for ya, brother. You were just too much damned trouble. But I'd stay outta Miami, well, actually the States period, for now. "

Mr Westen extended his hand. "Thanks for letting me join the Finley family,"

"Hey, any time, easy peasy. Maybe we can have a Finley family reunion when the little one comes along. Whatcha say, Charlotte? That work for you?"

"You're not staying?" she asked.

"Naw, thought I might spend a couple weeks fishing in Cancun and see what my retired FBI buddies know and then maybe pay a visit to Virge in the Bahamas."

Then Sam saw the look on Michael's face.

"Of course, I might have to hang out around here for awhile and make sure Little Miss Commando here stays out of trouble and follows doctor's orders."

"Hrmph," she grumbled, but Fiona didn't tell him to get lost either. "Great, just what I need. My new house smelling like Old Spice and cheap cigars."

"Yeah, why don't we go take a look?" Sam suggested. "Let's see what Peter Finley's trust fund bought!"

Michael helped Fiona to her feet and held her hand while she slipped her shoes on. He held onto her hand, kissing her lightly on the lips and then on the forehead before turning to go.

"She's made of tougher stuff than that, Petey. She's not gonna break."

"I don't think I'll ever get used to that," Michael remarked, but happy that his best friend would be around awhile longer to help him try.

Jojo and Trini Delaney were waiting for them outside the clinc. The dark woman wasted no time in rushing to Fiona's side and giving her a big hug. Michael and Sam both shook Jojo's hand and then they all turned towards that large Land Rover parked next to the Zedillo's clinic.

"Thanks for everything, both of you," Mr. Westen said gratefully as he gave his lady a leg up into the SUV, his hands lingering on her waist longer than necessary.

"Save that for the honeymoon, Mr. _Finley_ ," Sam teased.

"Anything for you, Charlotte," Trini chimed in with a smile. "Isn't that right, Jojo?"

"Anything she needs," Mr. Delaney agreed.

It wasn't long before the five of them were standing at the gate of the hacienda which Jojo had sold to the nearly-wed's through multiple shell companies and much financial magic on the part of their friend in creative finance, Mr. Barry Burkowski. The place was in reasonable shape for having an absentee owner up to that point. It stood on the cliff, a stone's throw from the Delaney household off Isla Muejers. The land behind the house looked fertile and the out structures behind the place could double for a barn, a workshop or both.

"Do ya like it, girl?" her gunrunner friend asked with a broad smile.

"I do," she breathed and then turned to the man holding her hand. "Do you like it?"

She urged him forward, tugging on his arm until they were standing a short distance away from the others in front of the threshold of their new home.

"I was expecting something more like your farm back home," he smiled, clearly teasing her. He pressed a kiss on top of her head. "But as long as you're happy, you can fill it with all the livestock you like…"

"Careful, Peter Finley," the redhead warned. "I can see a yard full of puppies and kittens and geese and chickens and maybe a horse or two." She leaned into his ear and whispered, "And then we'll teach the children to ride and shoot at the same time. It takes real skill to shoot on the move, you know."

"A whole brood of little Celtic warriors on horseback with P90's on their backs?" he whispered back. "I'm not sure I'm ready for more than one gun toting baby, Mrs. Finley…"

"One day at a time, Mr. Finley. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?"


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** _This is the fifth part of the 3.01 premiere AU that was originally posted as Chapter 5 in "Reconnecting."_

 _()()()()()()_

 **3.01 – The Enemy of My Enemy – Part 5**

 _An alternate for Season Three and beyond following on from_ _2.11 – Hot Spot_

 _()()()()()()_

 _Isla Mujeres 2009_

Charlotte Josephine Finley, aka Fifi or more often just Fi, was completely content.

She was so happy that it frightened her. She hadn't been this at peace since she was an eight year old girl back on the farm outside of Dublin and then of course the British had shattered that peace forever.

But at the moment, alittle over four months pregnant and not quite awake, she was feeling better in her body, more cheerful in her mind and her spirit than she had in weeks. Finally, after being fooled into a false sense of security by the lightness of her early symptons and then enduring weeks of horrendous nausea, utter exhaustion and nasty stomach cramps, the misery had passed. It had been bloody awful.

Today she felt almost like her old self, with a few additions to her frame that is. But in her semi-dream state, she was still back at her apartment the morning after they had chased Victor at the warehouse.

 _"Honestly, Michael, I'm starving," she had pleaded._

 _"So am I," he'd agreed and he'd risen up on one elbow before his head had disappeared under the covers._ The chills that had run through her body then as she could no longer see him, but only feel him, were echoing within her now. _She'd just been trying to come to grips with the fact that she had fallen asleep in her stealth clothes when she'd felt his weight settle over her waist and his hands latch onto her hips, his calloused palms kneading the flesh there a moment before she'd been lifted up, his touch caressing and the squeezing her buttocks prior to sliding down her legs as her thong had been removed._

 _She'd kicked out, stuffing the tiny piece of fabric between the mattress and the end of the covers, and then had felt his hands skimming the back of her thighs once more as he'd raised her legs up and she'd planted her feet firmly. The feather light touch of his fingers had shifted to her inner thighs and he'd slowly spread her lower limbs apart. The duvet had made a little tent, the thick material having been drawn across her knee caps, a little tent which had covered the head and shoulders of her lover until his head had dipped and she'd felt his hot breath tickling between her legs. Fiona had sighed in utter contentment as his tongue had slowly lapped along the bare-down-there flesh._

" _Hmmm, miss the little landing strip…" he'd murmured between licks and she'd frozen momentarily, remembering exactly why her sex was clean shaven. Sensing his mistake, Michael had re-doubled his efforts, licking and sucking her into a frenzy in no time. The Irishwoman had then ripped the duvet from the bed and had cast it onto the floor with one sweep of her arm, suddenly too hot from his ministrations and too eager to watch_ him _being to the one to bring her to bliss._

 _And she'd bucked into him, starting to thrash, but he'd held her firm, his mouth exactly where she'd really wanted it to be as she'd screamed_ his _name, and had enjoyed the fact that it was_ his _name that was on her lips and_ his _tongue that was lapping up her juices as she'd shivered against him._

 _Apparently, Michael had been equally pleased to be with her, as he'd then massaged and licked every inch of her flesh that he'd exposed while he'd rolled her black tank top off of her ever so slowly. By the time he'd been palming and suckling her breasts, she couldn't have taken it another minute. Fiona had wanted to feel him, all of him, on her and in her, and she'd told him so plainly and plaintively._

 _The dark haired man had chuckled as he'd raised her up to completely remove the garment and then they had lain down together, heated skin on heated skin, his hardened length pressing against her thigh as he'd settled between her thighs, which she had wasted no time in wrapping around his waist, drawing him as quickly as she could. They had both groaned aloud and then laughed lightly together over it._

 _He'd slipped inside her and his lover had wrapped him in her arms, her legs and her most intimate embrace as they moved as one towards their desired release. She couldn't understand why this was so intense, why she'd almost cried tears of joy at having him filling her, but she hadn't been able to get enough of him at that time, his weight upon her, his body joined to hers. Her calves had slid down, her heels hooking behind his ass and urging him on. She'd felt him tensing as he'd approached his release..._

As the memory of that white hot ecstasy had exploded into her quasi-conscious mind, her hand slapped his side of the bed and encountered nothing. The totally disoriented woman took several deep, panting breaths as she tried to still her hammering heart and remember where she was.

As she lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, she finally put together where she was and what was going on. They had slept in their new house for the first time. They had been staying with the Delaneys. The rough condition of their abode and the wretched state of her body in the first trimester meant that she was attended by someone constantly and visited by Dr. Zedillo frequently. While Michael had eventually started to go over to their little piece of heaven off Isla Mujeres proper to work on their residence-to-be during the day, she had gone from her bed, to the head to the porch that surrounded the gunrunner's private domain in ever decreasing circles. She'd had no appetite, no energy and no urgency do to anything whatsoever. She'd been a shell of her former self, gaunt and bony beyond belief.

Fiona hadn't meant to terrify her new husband, but she had managed it nonetheless. She had expected Michael to spend his days working frantically on their new home while she had lain around looking and feeling like death warmed over, but he had surprised her. Fiona had felt so guilty over Michael's quiet desperation as he had tried waiting on her hand and foot and hiding his ever growing fear for her and their child. Trini's and Pilar's assurances that this was within the parameters of normal had fallen flat.

She'd finally had to resort to bribing Sam to take Michael away from her side by force. But he was back in their bed every night, his cool body feeling wonderful against her overheated flesh after his nightly shower before even that became too warm. She'd been living in thigh length beach covers for weeks.

So, it had taken a monumental crying jag to coerce Michael into taking her with him two weeks after she had started to improve. He had been so relieved that Fiona was finally feeling better that he hadn't wanted to do anything to disrupt her progress. She had shocked herself by the violence of her reaction.

The Irishwoman had gone from barely noticing his presence in her wretchedness to unable to be away from him long enough for either of them to take a bathroom break. Jojo's wife had patted them both on the arm, albeit separately, and reassured them that this was within the boundaries of okay as well.

But now as she lay in her new bed, she was wondering where the object of her affection had managed to disappear to this morning. He'd told that he'd be working on his office and she'd believed him. No reason not to as they were on what amounted to a deserted island in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.

Slipping into an ubiquitous short sundress, this one a golden affair that almost matched the color of her newly tanned skin. She'd taken great pains to regain her color without getting terribly overheated and the pool chemicals had bleached her once mousy hair bright again. Her pallor had upset Michael almost as much as her non-stop nausea and her inability to stay awake for more than a few hours at a time

Padding out into the kitchen, she smelled something that enticed her appetite instead of turning her stomach and she smiled brightly at Mrs. Delaney behind the stove, pouring egg whites over perfectly cooked potatoes and onions. Michael must have told her what to make for breakfast. Trini was a good cook and only her rebelling guts had kept her from enjoying those benefits before now.

They chatted amiably while the younger two siblings ran around her soon to be living room, which was still devoid of furnishings. The bed and linens had only been installed a few days ago and the bathrooms and kitchen stocked so that they might have more amenities available whilst working on the house. The prior appliances had already been upgraded with more modern ones after the floor had been replaced.

After receiving the profound gratitude of the older woman repeatedly, Trini had then gathered her children, left the duo plenty of sandwiches and rice-based-heat-and-eat meals in the frig and told the expectant mother where she might find her hubby, which was in what was to become his new office.

Mrs. Delaney relayed Michael's request that Fiona relax and get some fresh air until he came in for lunch. As such, she soon found herself out on the deck in the shady part of the poured concrete patio that surrounded the pool in a bikini that showed off her newly acquired hormone fueled assets as well as her baby bump. Looking down at her legs, the petite woman shivered at their unshaven state and realized other areas probably needed attention as well, but she hadn't really cared much up to that point and reaching around certain parts of her was harder than it used to be. Picking up her now worn copy of _What to Expect While You're Expecting_ that he'd read cover to cover, she settled down to read.

But it wasn't long before her mind was drifting from the particulars of her pregnancy to her wedding and subsequent honeymoon night, some of which had happened in the very deck chair she was currently occupying, though it had been located on the Delaney's porch at the time.

The tome sat on her lap while she day-dreamed about their first time together since coming to live off the coast of Cancun near Isla Mujeres. They had been staying at Jojo's home while the plumbing, electrical and security systems at their own place were being fully vetted. Trini had also arranged a quiet beautiful ceremony in the gardens on the grounds of the compound; she had doubled as the maid of honor and had been the caterer too, preparing them a lovely candlelit meal and a sumptuous dessert.

Fiona found herself swiping away tears as she recalled the loving look on Michael's face, standing between Sam and the priest, looking so handsome it hurt, as she walked towards him with Trini behind her and little Ria scattering flowers in front of her. There were only a handful of other people at their wedding; basically Jojo's other children and a few trusted members of his inner circle. But the only one who mattered was standing there in front of the fountain wearing a white shirt and white slacks, smiling brightly, the wind tousling his black hair and the light in his beautiful blue eyes shining brilliantly.

She remembered the breeze swirling around her white sundress and through her hair. She thought about the long, lingering kiss they had shared while the others applauded. Fiona laughed and wiped her eyes again, the happy tears they had both cried now on her mind. They had retired to the dining room while everyone else headed into town to celebrate, giving them the most precious wedding gift: privacy.

The memory of his mischievous grin, the perfect echo of Michael McBride had warmed her heart as he'd nodded towards the sound system, which was filling the room with soft Irish pub music playing low, and asked once again if she would like to dance. Fiona had smiled as she had back then, albeit without a snub-nose revolver in her hand, and they'd danced as they had before, swaying slowly to the melody.

Eventually they had eaten the candle light dinner Trini had laid out for them. It was a simple yet elegant meal that they had sat side by side and fed to one another and then had gone back to the bedroom to change and have dessert out on the patio. He had slipped into his pajamas and slipped out of the room. She had hung up their clothes with great care, covered her body in a silken nightgown and fallen asleep.

 _Mrs Finley had found him out on the spacious porch, sitting in one of the loungers, staring at the stars. It had been two weeks since they had escaped the clutches of the organization and had left Victor's body on the boat. It'd been something neither had felt good about, but both of them had acknowledged it as being unavoidable. A storm had been brewing and the cooler winds that presaged bad weather had ruffled his hair and the open pajama shirt he had tossed on before meandering outside in his nightwear._

 _She'd been wearing a see-through sleeveless nightgown, a light peach colored affair that swirled around her ankles in the quickening breeze, the sheer material leaving little doubt as to what lie underneath._

 _He'd smiled wide at her approach and held out a hand to her. Then the former spy had made room for her to settle down between his legs. She'd scooted up the seat until she'd been snuggled against his chest, his arms wrapping around her shoulders, his hands settling on her then still flat stomach. His new wife had laid her own hands over his large paws and entwined their fingers._

 _They had sat in silence, watching the storm clouds roll in and swallow up the stars._

" _Did you have a nice nap?" the dark haired man had asked with only a trace of a smirk._

" _You went looking for me, didn't you?" the Irish woman had queried, her pique equal shares annoyance with him and embarrassment on her part. "Why didn't you wake me up?_

" _You need your sleep," had been his only answer, followed by a gentle squeeze of her middle. They had sat in silence watching the drama of nature and trying not to make too many parallels to their own lives._

" _Been awhile," she'd remarked quietly._

" _Been awhile," he'd agreed mildly. "More than a couple of weeks, I think…"_

" _It was clear that night, not cloudy. The stars were beautiful once I could finally see them."_

"You _were so beautiful that night," Michael had murmured._

 _She'd let out a nervous laugh, the storm unsettling her for some unknown reason. She'd always loved thunder storms, especially when she was a little girl strangely enough. "I was a sobbing nervous wreck."_

" _You were beautiful," he'd insisted. "You are beautiful," he'd amended, pressing little kisses into her hair._

" _I'm glad you think so…" She had become still again and then had sniffled a couple of times._

" _What's wrong?" Mr. Westen had whispered._

" _Nothing, damned hormones…"_

" _Tell me," he'd persisted, squeezing her tighter._

" _Are you sure you're okay with all this? I don't want you to feel you were pressured into—" and she had swallowed thickly as the black clouds continued to overtake the light._

" _Did I look like I was upset this afternoon?"_

" _No," Fiona had been forced to concur. "I don't think I've ever seen you so happy since Ireland."_

" _I know I haven't said it often enough or out loud even, but I do love you, Fiona. I always have, even when I couldn't figure out how to tell you." She had felt him shrug. "The rest doesn't matter much." He had kissed her on the sweet spot behind her ear and then he had blown out an aggravated breath. "But not knowing what to do about the rest_ really _frustrates me," the former covert operative confessed._

 _The ex-terrorist turned her head until she could reach the underside of his jaw line. "That is a lot," she had observed appreciatively, peppering his skin with tiny pecks of affection. "Coming from you..."_

 _He had shrugged again. "I have my moments…"_

 _They were quiet again for a beat or two before she stopped kissing him and laid her on his shoulder._

" _So what is frustrating you?"_

" _You fit into this world… Like you've said before, they're your people. But I don't think I can take up gunrunning as a career and I can't really go back to what I was doing before I was burned." He rubbed his hands over her stomach then, making slow circles. "And now I think I'm probably going to need a job where I'm home more and shot at less, something like that, but nothing is coming to mind."_

 _The Irish woman had stared at the clouds obscuring the light and had thought about their life in the shadows on a private island, feeling his warmth surround her and his steady breath reassure her, and then it had come to her. "What about your friend, the information broker who lives in the Canary Islands? He seems to have done very well for himself. Roger Steele, was it?"_

 _She knew of the man through her time with Armand, but that wasn't a memory she wanted to pursue very far and thinking of the Frenchman sent an unhealthy chill through her as the storm continued to gather. Fiona turned her head and pressed her cheek into his chest, sensing more than hearing his heartbeat._ They _were together now,_ they _were married now and_ they _had a child on the way._

" _Hmmm, you may be onto something there…"_

 _They'd sat there a little longer before she whispered. "So, shall we go get dessert and pretend we're in Milan?" And a shiver of outright desire had shot through her at the memory of eating various sweets and delicacies off of one another during that week of bliss they had spent in Italy. "Or maybe you'd like to go down to the gun range? Jojo has a fine selection of weaponry. Think of all those lovely guns…"_

 _She had shifted such that she was now sitting across his lap, her hands stroking across the broad expanse of his bare chest and abdomen, her nails skimming the waistband of his pajamas and then her thumbnail deliberately dragging across his nipples, pulling a moan from him._

" _Jus' think," she'd whispered close to his ear before nipping the lobe,"Jus' think abou' ya being on tha range, a pretty new HK416 in yar hands, the feel of a loaded weapon in yar own two hands, wrappin' around the lovely weight o' thot cool metal." Her Irish lilt had made her words somehow more erotic. "Or mabbe a P226 in your palm, can you feel thot gun in your hand. I kin feel thot gun in me hand…"_

" _That's not my gun," he'd squeaked as her own hand had slipped into the top of his pajama pants. "And you're not allowed around firearms while you're pregnant…" he'd declared before groaning deeply._

" _Yer such a spoil sport, Michael Westen," she'd purred, sounding anything but disappointed. "Ya know sommit we can do while I'm pregnant…?"_

" _I can think of a few things," he'd agreed, as he'd palmed her breast through the soft silk of her night gown, stroking a thumb over her hardened nub. His other hand had slipped between her dangling legs and along her inner thighs, parting them with a gentle push as his fingers had found their target and it had been her turn to gasp and then moan._

 _They had sat there, manipulating each other towards mutual ecstacy when a flash of lightning followed by a loud crack of thunder had caused them both to jump and cling to one another, laughing at the completely unexpected interruption._

" _Should we take this inside?"_

" _Dontcha like ta live dangerously, McBride?" and her grin had been full of mischief and lust. "Drop yar drawers and I'll show ya sommit thot's safe ta do whilst war onta me havin' yar baby…"_

 _And for whatever reason, the mention of their child had been a ridiculous aphrodisiac and the garments couldn't be pushed out of the way fast enough before she'd been sitting astride him, riding his engorged length in a slow, deliberate motion, his toothy smile of utter contentment flashing in the near darkness._

" _This is terrible tactics…"but he had hardly been trying to get her to stop._

" _Thot makes it all the more fun…" Between her gown having been hiked over her hips and his legs having been tangled in his pajama bottoms, God help them if anyone got the drop on them. But as her hands had splayed out over his bare chest, teasing him in the way he loved, and his had returned the favor, the newlywed been sure she would have died happy if that had been the case, each answering thrust of his hips bringing them both closer to ecstasy as she had leaned forward to lock her mouth onto his…_

Fiona shook herself as the book had dropped from her lap and startled out of her day-dream.

Taking a moment once again to calm her hammering heart and try to still her hectic breathing, Mrs Finley realized that her husband had been out in the heat far too long. Michael must need something to cool drink and a soft towel to dry off with.

As she looked at the beautiful blue water of the pool in front of her, she decided that she needed to make sure he cooled off in those azure waves that rippled in concert with the pool cleaner _and she needed to do it now._ With a wicked smile, she shinnied out of her bikini and threw her sun dress back over her naked form before striding in search of her man.

 _()()()()()()()_

Peter Michael Finley was hot.

He was hot in every sense that word could convey.

The dark haired man had found the perfect location for his office and workshop.

The free standing structure closest to the house was already a steel reinforced concrete block building.

The out building already had a concealed exit through the floor into a hurricane shelter that had been hewn out of the rock and he had found an additional surprise which initially had made him very happy.

But for all that, the ex- spy was not happy. He was indeed hot… boiling mad to be precise… and he was about to suffer from a heat stroke any minute now in the enclosed space with minimal windows and no internal power, which meant no air conditioning. The generator outside the building which was trying to supply electricity for the lights, the power tools he was using and totally inadequate box fans he was relying on for something vaguely resembling a breeze was not going to be supplying cooled air into the space anytime soon. It was so stifling that his muscle shirt and work shorts lay abandoned on the floor.

And he was almost done with his little project of wiring the panels that would supply the juice necessary to run all the electronics, sat phone and security measures his new office would require. It was a triple redundant system, able to run on solar battery, generator or the grid line he had tapped into with the help of his new neighborhoods and Fiona's newest friend in the gun running business, Jojo Delaney.

But the panel was being stubborn and so was he. The former Army Ranger, sniper and covert operative was not about to allow an operation which should have been completely under his control go sideways.

And yet sideways was exactly where it was going.

And he could have certainly used his new wife's help, just in terms of handing and holding things, as well as the company, because this was starting to drive him slowly insane, to the point he was actually mad.

But there was no way in hell his over-four-months-pregnant spouse would be allowed to spend any significant amount of time in this hotbox that would have made Viet Cong POW camp colonels proud.

So, he was hot, and he was hot and he was _hot_.

Because, standing there in his boxers, his tool belt, his rubber-soled work boots and sweat-soaked socks, his hair almost plastered to his head, the perspiration running down _through_ the scruff on his face and _over_ every inch of the well-toned limbs and well-muscled torso, he was such the picture of raw _hot_ masculinity that it was all Fiona could do not to drop the towel and the cool drink she had brought to him and have her way with him right there on the spot.

She stood there in the doorway transfixed, watching the play of the taut muscles beneath the skin as he went about his task, following individual trails of the tiny wet beads as they pooled on his flesh and then made their way down the various parts of his anatomy, unable to decide what particular part was most appealing, the broad expanse of his back, the flexing biceps or calves.

As she followed the line upward from his footwear and noted that the boxers had become stuck to him like they had been painted on, Fiona appreciated the view of his well-proportioned thighs before being completely drawn into an observation of the move and play of his taut buttocks as he attempted to hold the tool, the wire and the connector simultaneously with one too few a hand.

 _Oh, yes, he was hot indeed._

And when she padded up behind him as only she could do a split second after he had finally secured the last wire into the panel, he'd been startled and almost jumped out of his glistening skin.

"Fi, you shouldn't be in here," Michael admonished, though his tone completely negated his message.

"Neither should you," she countered, handing him the enormous glass of cool water. Cold water would have been too much of a shock to his overheated system. "You need to come out of here and get some cool air and some dry clothes," she concluded, looking the moisture accumulating and dripping from the only garment covering his body. "It's like a blast furnace in here. You're going to make yourself sick."

Michael toweled off his upper body and then his sopping hair. "You being the expert on sick?" he quipped with a toothy grin as she smacked him on the arm. He was thrilled that she felt well enough to banter with him again, despite his objections to her subjecting herself to the boat ride over to the island.

"You need to cool down enough to at least get some yogurt in you. You're going to faint on me."

"And you need to get back to the house before you pass out from being in here," he countered.

They left the workshop, turning off the generator before returning to the pool deck at the back of the house where Fiona had been not reading her book out on a lounge chair in the shaded corner of the enclosure. She guided him towards said seat and pushed him down into it.

"Take them manky boots off ya whilst I get ya sommit ta eat," she commanded. "An' stay right thar!"

"Whatever ya say, lass…" he chuckled. It amused him how frequently she slipped in and out of her native tongue when they were alone together, no longer needing to pretend to be an American, but too much in the habit of doing the accent to quit using it altogether. He doffed the tool belt and went to work on his truly nasty work boots and socks, dropping them next to the sweaty shirt and shorts he had carried along with him from the workshop.

About that time, Fiona returned with a large glass of sun tea adorned with a rather hefty lemon wedge, another tumbler of cool water, two blueberry yogurts and one spoon. She refused to let him have any of it before he finished off another glass of H2O and then she graciously allowed him to eat while the no longer entirely lithe Irishwoman positioned herself on the lounger behind him, wrapping her calves around his waist and depositing her feet in his lap.

"Almost done?" she queried.

"Almost," he agreed. "It'll be ready for all the electronics … right after I hook up the air conditioner."

Fiona chuckled. "I don' know… I rather enjoyed watching you perspire…" and she rubbed her heels ever so gently across his thighs.

"Let's try for something a little less like heat stroke next time. How was your morning? Have you eaten?"

"Hmmm, my morning was fabulous," she purred, now using her talented toes on the most sensitive part of his anatomy. "I slept late, I had very good dreams and Trini fed me a wonderful breakfast."

She felt her husband stiffen at the possibility that Mrs. Delaney might still be present, but Fiona's musical laugh told him the lady in question was long gone. He touched the little harp tattoo on the top of her foot with his thumb. "I'm glad you're feeling better, Fi."

"I think she's going to be an only child. I'm not sure I want to go through that again."

"I know I don't," Michael murmured under his breath, the memory of her misery not far from his mind.

"And I think I have decided on a name."

Michael was finding it difficult to concentrate on eating his yogurt. "And what would that be?" Her imperious tone had given cause for pause.

"I want to name our daughter Destiny Victoria."

"Daughter?" he echoed, now working his way through the second yogurt and finding it even harder to concentrate. "Do you and Pilar know something I don't or have you made an executive decision?"

"I just know," she declared, as she rubbed against his manhood with the arch of her foot, sending a visible shudder through his frame. "Do you like the name?"

"Destiny Victoria… Finley…" He thought about his one-time adversary who had died helping them to win their freedom and decided it was a good fit. And, somewhere in South Florida, no doubt Seymour Talbot would be happily agreeing with her acknowledgement of destiny bringing them together.

He made a little sound of disappointment as she withdrew and then got to her feet. It didn't last long though when he heard the whispering sounds of her garment being removed and presumably deposited on the back of the deck chair. Thoughts of christening the storied seat again swept through his brain, setting his imagination and other things on fire.

They hadn't been together since their last encounter on this particular piece of furniture. Fiona had gotten violently ill within a day of their honeymoon and she had been sick and miserable for the majority of her first trimester. He had taken more cold showers in the last three months than during all of his deployment in Afghanistan… although admittedly running water was less available in the desert.

What happened next left him with one of the fastest erections he'd had since high school, as Fiona came sauntering into his line of sight wearing nothing but a smile. He didn't know why he hadn't just assumed she wasn't wearing anything under that gold sundress, but he hadn't.

The changes in her figure did way more than set his mouth watering. Fiona was round in _all_ the right places and Michael had never before imagined what that might look like. His lover had always been underweight, lean, mean and ready to pounce like the feline predator she was and he had loved it… _but this woman_ … this woman was sex personified and he couldn't get close enough to her fast enough.

Capturing her in his arms by the edge of the pool, he laid claim to her mouth with a passionate kiss while trying to remind himself that being as rough as his body wanted to would be a _really_ bad idea right now.

"You need to wash off," she said, pushing on the back of his knee with her own and using her weight to send them falling over the edge and into the azure waters, making sure that his back hit the waves first. They plunged to the bottom of the shallow end, but without any impact on the concrete at the bottom.

The petite woman broke the surface first and didn't give her husband a second's warning before she easily pulled his already sodden undershorts away from his lower half. He gasped for air for both reasons and ran a hand across his eyes as she slung the wet waves of auburn hair away from her face.

"What's the matter, Michael?" she inquired innocently. "Skinny dipping no fun in the middle of desert island where no one can catch you?"

"They're probably watching with satellites," he groused half-heartedly as he allowed himself to be pushed back towards the steps and the hand rail at the shallow end of the kidney-shaped pool.

"Then let's give them a show," Fiona purred, maneuvering him onto the top step, where he sat gloriously naked and almost completely out of the water. She settled onto a next two steps down, splaying his legs apart on either side of her while she appreciated his dripping manhood, covered in more than chlorinated water. Wrapping one arm around his waist and her lips around the tip, she quickly cut off any protests he was about to make, flicking her tongue over the very end and making all his leg muscles lock up at once, drawing a throaty groan out of him that had her smirking.

She took his entire length into her warm mouth and sucked hard and then hummed, causing him to growl from deep in his chest and run his fingers though her damp hair. Her tongue teased his tip again, as she had run her mouth over his hard member several times before coming back to the top.

"One more thing," she smiled up at him as her lips and her fingers traded places, her thumb flicking over the end now, spreading the precum that continued to issue from his manhood while her other hand continued to massage and caress his balls. "Ya cannae go ta thot meetin' with Roger Steele by yarself."

"Fiona," he groaned in pleasure and frustration. "We talked about this…"

She stole his words away as she took him to the root and sent shudders of desire through him before releasing him again. "Aye, we did and yer gonna have proper back up. Thar's no way tha father o' me child is sailing across the Atlantic without tha proper firepower at his disposal."

His wife blew a cool breath across his wet, exposed cock, causing more chills to shoot through his quivering frame.

"You do not fight fair, Mrs Finley…ah…" His words were cut off as she licked her way back down and up again as his fingers entangled more firmly into her hair.

"Never said I did," she informed him bluntly before raising up to capture his mouth in a bruising kiss. She settled across his knees as she relinquished her hold on him. "Now, you promise you are going to let Shay back you up when we take the Josephine over to meet—"

"Fi…" the dark haired man took her by the shoulders and pulled her towards him. "You're right, they are going to come after me, which means it's too dangerous for you go. I'm counting on Management showing up so I can explain to him the new reality of his situation."

"Ya remember whot Victor told ya when ya wanted ta leave me behind in Miami because it wa' too dangerous?" She stroked him under the water and rubbed his sex against hers, a delighted smile blossoming across her face as she pleasured herself and teased him simultaneously, a satisfied moan leaving her parted lips.

"Can we finish this argument later?" he begged, palming her breasts and causing her to writhe in his lap as he flicked his thumbs over the pert nipples.

"Now who's not fighting fair…" she grumbled half-heartedly before she rose up on her knees and then slowly settled onto him, now sighing contently at the familiar feeling of being filled again by her only true love.

"I'm going to miss this… seeing you… seeing your face…" He covered her mouth with his, pushing his tongue past her teeth as slowly as he was pushing into her womanhood, meeting her movements with thrusts of his own.

Michael didn't add that he would really miss being able to lie atop her, being cradled by her arms and legs in the most intimate of embraces, but this was awfully good as well. There would be a time soon enough where face to face sex was going to cease before it ceased altogether. But that really didn't matter as long as they were able to be together. He would take whatever she wanted to give him whenever she wanted to.

"Sooooo…." she sighed, her breathing and their pace quickening."We're going for a boat ride…?"

"How about I talk Roger into coming…" His words were lost as a wave of pleasure started rushing through him. Michael shuddered as his lover rode him harder, her own body now quaking with release.

As they came back down to earth, embracing one another and trying to get enough oxygen to resume their conversation, basking in the warm glow of their lovemaking, Fiona let out a surprised little sound.

"She's moving," she whispered, her voice full of awe as they sat joined together in their pool, taking in the wonder of this totally unfamiliar world they found themselves in.

He didn't know what to say, so he kissed her as tenderly as he could, before pressing his lips gently to her forehead. "Okay, you win," Michael conceded happily. "I'll get Roger to meet me somewhere in Mexico, alright?"

"Ya see, me girl," his wife said to his unborn child." I told ya yar Da wa' a smart man…"

And Peter Michael Finley laid a gentle hand over his child's temporary home and the other over his wife's cheek. "Smart enough to know what's really important," he agreed as he drew her in for another soft, slow kiss.

()()()()()()

As it turned out, both of them had been right about what would happen next when Roger Steele had reluctantly agreed to meet with his friend, Peter Finley, nee Michael Westen, in a sleepy Mexican town not really on any map. Management had tipped his hand and between the information broker's personal army, Fiona's cadre of local and foreign gun running associates and some new friends Michael had met along the way, who apparently had taken an interest in the organization themselves as well, the old man had been convinced that his partner had been right in opposing the spy's recruitment and that Mr Westen really was just too much damned trouble.

After agreeing to make sure that the two of them were the healthiest officially dead people on the planet, Dr. Fullerton's partner had gotten into his helicopter and flown away, never to be heard from again. Michael's new friends had also gotten in a chopper and had taken off into the sunset, which was probably a good thing, because Fiona had taken an instant dislike to the young blonde woman and the bearded man with the wild brown hair that had accompanied her.

While Michael Westen might have decided to work with them anyway over her objections, Peter Michael Finely was a much smarter man, as his wife had noted. That man knew that making sure Destiny Victoria Finley was happy, healthy and well adjusted enough to be left with her adopted cousins watching over her while her mother and father did small side jobs for his new employer was far more important than anything anyone else had to offer him.

And if it took five years for them to be comfortable enough to leave their beloved daughter in the company of the Delaneys and her personal Belgium sheperd guard dog that her grandmother had given to her mother raise and train to watch over the girl from the day it arrived, that was okay too. It had only taken Michael three years to get over his dislike of actual felines, as opposed to his lioness of a wife, when he discovered cats were better equipped to keep the varmits from chewing on his power lines better than any trap he could devise. And once again, Mrs Finley had opted for reminding him how smart he was to listen to her instead of _'Told ya so.'_

So it was not usual to find his raven haired daughter sitting in his lap and his wife at his side, a large canine and a couple of felines at his feet, while Mr. Finley kept track of the covert operations going on in the world because he really was the smartest man in the room now in more ways than one.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:** _This is the sixth part of the 3.01 premiere AU that was originally posted as Chapter 8 in "Reconnecting."_

 _()()()()()()_

 **3.01 – The Enemy of My Enemy – Part 6**

 _An alternate for Season Three and beyond following on from_ _2.11 – Hot Spot_

 _()()()()()()_

 _Paris 2014_

Claudia Herrmann aka Charlotte Josephine Finley aka Fiona Glenanne was now the happiest she'd ever been since her blissfully ignorant days of loving Michael McBride back in Dublin. Sitting on the patio of her suite at the Shangri-La Hotel, staring at the Effel Tower glistening in the early morning light and sipping an almost acceptable cup of tea whilst basking in the new sunshine and bundled against the cool temperatures, she was sated and satisified. She had taken a long bath and had watched the sun rise.

 _If I'da known being dead and off tha grid wa' this much fun, I'da had done it sooner._

Then she corrected herself as she looked back through the patio doors at the figure still sleeping on the luxuious bed set against the wall in the center of the beautifully appointed five start hotel room. The Irishwoman _had_ gone dark before. While parts of it had been fun, it couldn't compare to the total contentment she had now. She smiled softly in the direction of her slumbering husband and knew what the difference was in her life. He had chosen to leave the CIA behind and put her and their raven haired daughter first in his life and he had learned how to serve his country on his own terms without being at their beck and call, making his own decisions about what was in his and their best interests without being subject to the self-important bureaucrats who made rules for _other_ people to live and die by.

They were finally on the same page and staying in the same hemisphere most of the time.

As her mother pictured Destiny Victoria in her mind's eye, for it was far too dangerous to carry a photograph of any kind, she remembered the five year old leaping into her _Uncle Chuck's_ arms as he had come through the door in a traditional Santa Claus suit of his Midwest youth the week before Christmas.

With their household covered in colored lights, bright ribbons and garlands at the little one's insistence, Sam had looked right at home in their midst. The display had gotten larger every year much to her father's chagrin, but he hadn't allow his discomfort with Christmas decorations impede his daughter's enjoyment of the holiday. The little girl had seen through Mr. Axe's disguise in an instant and had squealed with delight, throwing her arms around her beloved uncle's neck in a near choke hold.

" _Whoa, whoa, easy there, Dessie," he had chuckled, while trying to maintain his balance. "What are they feedin' ya, little lady? Lead weights?" He had enveloped the young child in a tight bear hug._

" _You're silly," she'd declared, pulling the false beard out of the way and peppering his whiskery cheeks with kisses. They had all laughed then. Her enthusiasm was infectious. She was the light of their world._

Fifi, as she was known these days, finished off her cup of tea and wondered if the trip to Disney World was going alright. Her happiness at getting to go on an intel gathering mission with Michael had been balanced by her fear for her daughter, though she knew Sam would die before he'd let anything happen to his neice. With the Delaney's and a cadre of their own security personnel going along for the trip, she knew her child was in better hands than their own. Even with the six years that had passed between being burned, "dying" and operating in the shadow world of information brokering, it was still far too dangerous for Michael to set foot on the east coast of the USA, much less in his home state of Florida.

That the former Hampton sisters, Madeline Westen and Jill Campbell, would be attending the theme park during that same time frame with the latter's South Carolina State Trooper son and his own family in tow was not a coincidence in any way. It would be a rare opportunity for a partial family reunion.

 _As safe as anything ever was in their world_ … While her husband had taken every precaution within his power to prevent problems, she had learned as a child to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

The dark haired woman sighed again and wished she could enjoy the breeze in her hair, but the wig had to stay in place as she was outside and subject to surveillance. She peered back through the windows, chuckling lightly at the blonde hair adorning her husband's head. She had ripped the false beard and moustache none-too-gently off his visage last night in her haste to get to the face underneath them.

Fi rubbed a hand across the back of her sweater clad neck and chuckled with amusement over Michael's initial reaction to the short cropped black hair. She had worn the wig, along with heavy dark glasses and equally heavy make-up that included loads of bronzer and a few new "scars," as a cover while working with Jojo Delaney in various gun running pursuits multiple times. But Michael had never seen it up close.

Oddly, the first time he _had_ walked in on her while she getting ready for a job, the dark haired man had immediately removed black hair piece and cast it aside, followed by her bathrobe. Tangling his fingers in her long auburn hair, he had kissed her passionately and then scooped up her naked form, carrying her back into the bedroom and removing his own clothes in record time. Fiona should have been mad at him for ruining her wig and making her late for the meet, but the utter intensity he had put into making love to her, worshipping her fervently with his whole body, completely voided any irritated reaction.

Only later when she had returned from that job had he explained, after much coaxing, cuddling and a spectacular display of coercion by fellatio, that the look had reminded him too much of the disguises she had sported in the Middle East during their time apart when she had gone back to work briefly for Armand, and then for her brother Seamus, and he had been keen to erase the memories from his mind.

So, she had been really puzzled the day before Sam's arrival to find the dark hair piece sitting on the marble sink top in their large bathroom along with the make-up palettes she used to perfect her various covers and her man standing at the sink, wearing only a towel whilst reading the instructions on a bottle of hair bleach. She had padded into the en suite silently and unclothed as always in the morning, before taking the bottle from him and setting it down the counter, meeting his bemused glance with wary eyes.

" _Michael?"_

" _Hey…" His expression had blossomed into that megawatt smile that always made her knees weak._

" _Are you going to tell me what's going on?" she had inquired, leaning her weight into his body and wrapping her arms around this waist. "Or do you want me to cajole it out of you?" Her answering smile was just as bright, now that she'd been hopeful that there was a good reason for all the things laid out._

" _I might like to see you try," he had countered, the smile quickly converting into a lascivious leer._

" _oh, I'm sure you'd find my interrogation techniques impossible to resist," she'd promised as she'd rubbed her body against the length of his, aligning their hips as best she could while standing up bare footed and putting particular pressure against his groin. Kissing the underside of his jaw, she had felt certain parts of his anatomy stir in response to her ministrations._

" _Yep, I may crack any minute now," he had agreed with a light chuckle. "Tell you everything—" He had stammered as her nimble fingers had removed the towel and then there had been no barriers to flesh meeting with quickly heating flesh as she enveloped his stiffening manhood firmly with her fingers._

" _I know you will," Fiona had purred before pressing kisses to his chest and then licking the harden nubs with broad strokes of her tongue, her hands now grasping his taut buttocks, nails digging into his flesh._

" _I have a surprise for you…" He'd squeaked as she slid down his muscular form, laying molten fire down on his skin with her mouth before she wrapped it tightly around his twitching member._

" _Sam's coming?" she'd guessed, pausing in between sucking so hard that his thighs had been trembling against her shoulders. Seeing the poised spy come undone at her touch had always thrilled her._

"I will be _if you don't stop," Michael had begged, pulling to her feet and then wrapping his hands about her waist. He pushed his own tongue against her teeth as soon as their lips sealed together, the familiar dance for dominance beginning in earnest before the kiss broke and they had both gasped for air. Picking her up, the former CIA operative had turned quickly and deposited his fiery wife on the only free bit of countertop left. Fiona had felt the heat of his gaze and then smiled as she realized "Mr. Finley" had been looking at his own reflection behind her as well as staring at her body laid bare before him._

" _So, tell me," the Irishwoman had requested as he had stepped between her lower limbs, spreading them around his hips and poising himself at her entrance. "Why is Uncle Chuck arriving for Christmas such a big surprise?"_

" _Because this year he's not staying with us, he's taking Vicky to Disney World to see my mom."_

 _Fiona had inhaled loudly, both from what her loving husband had said and from the feel of him pushing into her body with a slow, determined slide until he could go no farther. Wrapping her legs around his waist and leaning back on her hands to support herself, she looked up into his bright blue eyes._

" _So, you're getting us alone time for Christmas?" Her eyes had started to well up, happiness clashing with worry for their daughter not being with them for the first time in their collective lives._

" _Better," he'd said as he began to move against her, nodding with his head towards the wig on its stand. "_ We're _going on a job for Roger together."_

 _Michael had reached out, grasping her rib cage to steady her while he'd begun stroke harder, grinding against her as their bodies met, and then tweaking her hardened peaks with his thumbs._

 _Watching him watching her, watching the interplay of their bodies had brought them both to an ecstasy that had them shuddering in one another's arms as the aftershocks of their mutual orgasms dissipated._

Smiling, the Irishwoman took another look at her favorite city laid out before her in the glistening morning light and picked up her cup. A low groan caught her attention and she saw that her husband was kicking out under the sheets. Perhaps there was another memory that needed to be remade today.

And with that oh so pleasant thought in mind, Fifi went back inside to make preparations for breakfast…

 _And a little something more..._

()()()()()()()

Helmut Herrmann aka Peter Michael Finley aka Michael Westen never hurt so good. He had been bitten, bruised, scratched, scraped and somehow utterly satiated in the midst of all that bodily harm.

Sometime in the pre-dawn hours, he had felt his wife slip from between the soft sheets and move off in the general direction of the en-suite. When he heard the spigot on the bathtub engage instead of the shower, he knew she would be gone for at least an hour and probably more and he was grateful.

Because while last night had been the best of everything his relationship with his beloved embodied, his body needed some well-deserved rest from any further exertion and punishment. On the other hand, Michael decided, he had suffered far worse with far less pleasant results. As the covert operative tried to stretch and roll over, his shoulders complained from both the teeth marks and from the impact they had taken off of the floor. For some reason, his woman had seen fit to throw him onto the ornate rug before leaping on him, sending all the air from his lungs with a grunt and probably cracking a rib…

He ran his fingers through his bottle blonde hair and settled more comfortably into the plush pillow, his mind drifting to the moments before he had proceeded to change its color for the mission at hand.

" _You be good for Uncle Chuck and Trini," Fi had admonished, sitting on her knees and enveloping her child in a tight hug, trying desperately not to let the tears form in front of their daughter and her friends._

" _I am!" Victoria had protested, as she had pulled out of her mother's grasp and folded her little arms across her chest, her expression a perfect imitation of a maternal pout. "I'm always good."_

" _For your uncle you are," he had amended before scooping her up off the floor to press a kiss to her forehead. The truth of the matter was the only one Destiny Victoria gave grief to was her mother._

 _Which had amused all the assembled adults to no end, but they'd all been wise enough not to say it._

 _Stepping beside her husband and rubbing a hand on her baby girl's back, Fiona's voice had taken on a serious tone as the Irishwoman had reminded the kindergartener of what her cover story was while she was at the Florida theme park and meeting with Madeline Westen for the first time._

 _With a dramatic sigh worthy of her grandmother, the raven haired child had rolled her eyes and huffed, "I know, mama," with just the perfect dash of exasperation to draw a hearty guffaw from Sam._

It had upset Michael that his little girl had been learning cover stories since she had been old enough to repeat them, but his wife had been practical, blunt and correct about the realities of their lives.

 _And all too soon they had found themselves alone in the house, Fi reminding him not to forget to dye his eyebrows along with his hair. She had also offered to dye some other hair matching colors, but they had needed to get going so as not to miss the private plane and pilot that Roger had sent for their use._

 _Claudia and Helmut Herrmann, followed by their four bodyguards, had left the airport at Cancun and had spent the next eight hours reviewing the mission data, eating a couple of gourmet onboard meals and finally drifting off to sleep four hours after their departure from the refueling stop in St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada. The excitement in Fiona's eyes, in her body language and in her secret kisses when no one was looking had told her husband he had made the right decision in his small subterfuge. Their intel gathering at an international conference of industrialists had been actually scheduled to take place next week. He had convinced Roger that a side trip to France was just what this mission needed._

 _The lady of the house, as it were, had spent the first two years of her child's life attending to her every need whilst her husband established himself as discrete and invisible, as well as good and useful to Roger Steele's organization, as a fair number of his friend's major clients had been terrified of the old Michael Westen and with good reason._

 _Meanwhile, Peter Finley and his older brother Charles had spent numerous hours, with the help of various technical experts who were brought in black bagged in every sense of the word, setting up their new communications center in pieces such that no one ever got a full view of the finished work. Even Dixon had taken a ride incommuicado, much to the computer expert's displeasure, in order to complete the final installation and testing._

 _As such, Jojo Delaney's underground range had gotten a heavy work out during those months after she had stopped breast feeding as she had tried to keep herself sane while limiting her activities to spending time between her home, Trini's home and Isla. Fi had admitted to him that she probably would have gone stark raving mad without Mrs Delaney there to guide her through the transition into her new life._

As Michael heard the bathroom door swing open, he realized that he must have dozed off again. Fiona was now sporting her full cover ID as she leaned down to kiss his shoulder just above the bite marks and murmured a farewell with a promise of a quick return before moving towards the entry door to the suite.

 _Apparently, finally taking her to Paris for a long overdue honeymoon was just his wife had both needed and wanted. When the Irishwoman had woken up, she was groggy, but not so disoriented that she failed to notice that it was the French capital and not the German city that lay twinkling below them in the gathering dusk. When he had explained his small deceit, she had made her pleasure immediately known with a joyous embrace and an ardent kiss before the aircraft could be set down at Orley Sud._

As the now blond-haired man stirred and rubbed a hand over his stinging and beard-less cheeks, he recalled that _pleasing_ his fiery wife could be painful too, never mind the consequences of _displeasing_ the lovely, lithe and lethal love of his life. The many minutes he had invested in the cover ID had been destroyed in seconds, as had his shirt. The covert operative smiled again despite his discomfort. He was certain that only the presence of the bodyguards in the limo had stopped her from attacking him then.

 _She had slammed him up against the wall as soon as the door to the suite had closed behind them. Her mouth latched onto his and a lamp hit the floor a moment before she was rending open his garment, her fingers scratching as they slipped into the spaces between the buttons before sending the little white objects flying and trapping his arms in the sleeves as she literally tried taking the shirt off his back._

 _Perhaps it had been his asking if they might be more comfortable on the bed that had inspired her to pivot his body against her hip and dump him onto the floor. She had clearly indicated that his comfort was not of prime importance as she had landed on him, albeit not with all her weight, and the proceeded to remove the beard and moustache in a less than gentle fashion. Still, she had been a passionate whirlwind, nipping and kissing, caressing and grasping every inch of his muscular frame she could reach, removing his and her own clothing with as much disregard as she had for this shirt and then she'd been riding him hard, head thrown back, eyes closed, her hair freed from the confines of her disguise long ago._

Michael moaned, both from that remembered passion and from the irritation of the rug burn he had on his shoulder blades and buttocks, as he turned in the bed onto his back. When he heard _Fifi_ come back into the room, he smelled something good mingling with her perfume. But he was too caught up in the memory of last night to fully awaken, still watching in his sleep the lithe form of his lover, sitting astride him, her hands on his chest, tweaking his hardened nipples while she brought him to ecstacy with her...

"Have you missed me then?" her voice with evident humor echoed in his slumbering mind and then he heard the patio door open and then close, taking the chill from outside away. Michael shuddered and then whimpered, the phrase causing his mind to jump from the sweet remembrances of last night's ardor to the first time he had seen her Arabic alter ego over a decade ago in a hotel room in Tripoli.

" _Naw, ya don'!" a muffled voice had commanded and he had frozen as he'd recognized it._

 _The side of a 9 mm had impacted his temple before he could move and he had found himself sprawled on the floor, flat on his back in the tiny area between the wall and the bed, striking his head on the night stand on the way down. Half conscious and defenseless as his slim assailant dressed in the same dark peasant garb of the man he had followed earlier in the day had swiftly jerked his arms painfully over his head and had handcuffed them to the bed frame._

" _Yer slippin'. The desert's fried yar brain."_

 _He'd looked up blearily at the figure pinning his legs to the floor, bony kneecaps biting into the muscles of his thighs. He hadn't needed to see the face under the black balaclava to know who it was._

" _And yer barking mad if ya think ya can come har ta kill me and get away wif it," she'd spat, surging forward to straddle his stomach and jam a Glock under his chin._

 _He hadn't even know she was on the continental, much less in Tripoli. How could she think that of him?_

That was why he had grabbed her and pulled the dark hair from her head the first time he'd seen her in their home getting ready to do a job with their new best friends in the world outside of the former SEAL.

" _So, what's your problem with Achmed?" That had been her code name as a man in the Arabic world after he'd abandoned her and, even though she now went by "Amira" since she no longer disguising herself as variations of that man but rather his sister, Fifi still referred to the cover by its original name._

That was the thing he had finally confessed to her when she'd just come back from working that job with Jojo Delaney, something he was oddly appreciative of _._ That she was in the company of a trusted companion while utilizing a cover she'd established back in the day during her gun running with Seamus had made the separation moderately less painful than remembering where he'd first seen her since Dublin and again in the employ of Armand Andreani. He hadn't known then what he had driven her to.

" _It's just wig," she had said as she'd pulled it and the hair net from her head and laid it on the huge console that dominated his office. His fingers had tangled in the long auburn locks immediately and he had drawn her in for a long, languid kiss, followed by tender touches and comforting embraces._

It wouldn't have been fair to expect her to never leave the island and it was valuable to them as a couple, as friends to the Delaneys and to him as an information broker to know what was going on in the gun running community. But that was exactly what a part him wanted to do, keep her there with him on the island and never let her go, but he couldn't. He hated it, but he knew he had to let her go.

" _It's just makeup," she had cooed as she had slid from his lap and settled on the floor between his legs, rubbing some of the cosmetics on his jeans as she rubbed her face on the growing bulge in his pants._

They had agreed that one of them would always be with Destiny Victoria if the other had to be gone. It hadn't happened often, but Michael had gone on some black bag jobs with Sam as back-up and had had to accompany Sam on some things that had turned out to be more dangerous than originally planned.

" _It's not who I am now or even who I was then," she'd whispered before freeing his manhood from the confines of his clothing and wrapping her warm, wet mouth around that particular part of his anatomy._

He knew that eventually she would go back into business and some day that uncomfortable memory would come out of the closet along with her gun runner covers. She had forgiven for it, so why had he apparently been able to forgive himself for it after all these years? Why was he still holding onto it?

 _Because she was who she was, not matter what she did, and he had always been what he had done. He was finally learning to stand on his own moral code without bouncing it off the Army or the Agency first._

Michael stirred and stretched out his prone parts, the memories of last night coming to him again as it were. He had a vague image of him pinning her to the wall at some point, pounding into her sweat slicked form, her teeth latching onto his shoulder to stop her screams from drawing the security people.

"Are you going to sleep all day? You look like you're ready to come out and play…" and the smirk was evident in her voice and that's when he realized that there was more than one definition of stiff going on with his body. His limbs felt like lead for some reason as he pushed outward with his hands and feet.

He cracked his eyes open just enough to discern that it was nearly dark in the room. _Hadn't the sun been coming up?_ Then he saw it. The curtains had been drawn over all the windows, the elegant ties made of fine fabric that had held them back were gone. As he had tried to move his arms from over his head back to his battered sides and couldn't, that was when he realized where they had disappeared to.

"Are you ready for breakfast?" Fifi asked, coming into his view carrying a tray and wearing a smile.

Michael went to move his leg as she came to the edge of the bed and discovered that more than his hands had been tied. Fighting down an irrational momentary panic, he tried the ties on his wrists again. He could break the furniture if he had to get free. But short of that, he was pretty securely bound.

"What are you doing?" he countered as she set the tray on the night stand. There was a variety of fruits, pastries, condiments and sweets on the silver platter. He turned his attention back to his wife, focusing on the only thing she _was_ wearing, the short cropped dark wig she'd had on most of the trip.

She leaned in close to his ear and set her teeth on his earlobe without actually biting.

"Remaking a memory," she whispered before standing up to pull the sheet away, causing his own naked form to shudder, moreso than that part of him that was already quivering in anticipation.

The lithe woman straddled him, landing on his muscular abdominals and inches away where he wanted her to be. She leaned forward onto her elbows and scooted up his frame, rubbing her skin against his enticingly along with way. Then she sealed her mouth against his, the kiss growing more fervent as she raised her hands up, running her digits through his blonde hair, scraping her nails lightly across his scalp in deference to the damage she had done the night before.

Fifi stroked her tongue against his teeth… it was the only thing he still had control of and he hesitated just long enough to earn a nip to his bottom lip.

"No?" she queried and then selected a small, savory little bite of eggs, bacon and cheese in a puff pastry shell. "Perhaps you'll open up for this?" Her smile was pouty and beautiful and he couldn't help but answer it and then open his mouth for the proffered treat.

"Hmmm," he commented. _It was delicious, though it was not something he'd have normally eaten._

She kissed his forehead, her small perfect breasts hanging temptingly just out of reach, and then locked lips with him again, this time being granted access without having to fight for it. Michael pulled against the restraints as their mouths molded together, their tongues stroking their mutual fires, for what seemed like forever, but was over all too soon as she pulled back.

"That was tasty," Fifi agreed, reaching out to pop one of the treats into her mouth before feeding him another. "Now for some yogurt…?" She shivered as she spooned the cold concoction onto her nipple and then shuffled forward to raise her breast to his mouth. "Not blueberry, but I don't think you'll mind."

And he didn't mind in the least, as his wife alternated between spooning it on herself for consumption and spoon feeding it to him.

"You see, just like Milan," she purred.

"Except for the ropes and the rug burns," he smiled, pulling against the ties that bound.

"oh, burns? Let me help with that…" and she dipped her fingers into a small bowl that smelt of honey and coconut before spreading a thin layer on his both abraded cheeks. "We'll just leave that on there a moment." The Irishwoman smeared some on the teeth marks and then worked her way done his chest, covering all the scratches and then his hardened nubs with the golden goo.

Fifi sat up then, his throbbing member poking her in the backside, and she grinned at him wickedly while she licked the syrupy remains off her finger tips one at a time. The dark haired woman rose up and then trapped his dripping length underneath her before rocking gently, pulling a loud groan from him.

"Okay, I think it's ready now, " she sing-songed and then proceeded to work her way back up his muscular form, licking the ambrosia clean from every part of him, elicitly moans of pleasure and sighs of frustration as he continued to jerk against the restraints, especially as she mouthed his second most sensitive spot. Once she had soothed and cleaned his face, Fiona's deep bruising kiss stole his breath.

His wife maneuvered her way back down his body, massaging and running feather light touches the bruises where she found them until dismounted entirely, going to the foot of the bed to free his legs, running her hands along the toned calves and up the inner muscles of his well-developed thighs before she knelt between them. _It was torture not to be able to touch her…_ But his mind blanked out when she blew a cool breath across twitching cock and then she crawled back over him, dragging herself across the tip without any other contact.

"No more need to just think about this," she whispered before she grasped him firmly and lowered herself inch by inch onto his manhood until she was sealed against him, sighing at the fullness within.

Slowly and deliberately, Fi raised herself up, almost breaking contact, and came down again in a languid rhythm guaranteed to drive him mad. Her hands drifted from her own breasts and womanhood, touching and pleasuring herself in places he could not reach. Faster and faster, she stroked against him, grinding herself into his groin on each downstroke before rising up again. Soon, they were both trembling with the need for release. As he pulled hard on the cords that still bound him as his orgasm shook him hard as she continued to move against him before stuffing her own fist in her mouth, collapsing on his chest as she muffled her own scream.

They lay there for what seemed like hours but were probably only minutes trying to get their breathing back under control. They had made love many times since Destiny had been born and it had been wonderful, joyous encounters, but something about being all alone together in a foreign city with a clandestine purpose had reignited the fires of their smoldering passion. He wanted so badly to wrap her up in a tight embrace, but he was still tied to the bed.

"Fiona…" he whispered her real name and she let out a truly contented sigh.

"Yes, Michael?" she whispered against his chest, her ear on his no longer thundering heart.

"Can I get up now?"

She kissed the hollow at his throat and laughed lightly, pushing herself upright and breaking the contact.

"You see," the Irishwoman pulled the hair piece away and let her long auburn locks flow free. "Just a memory, now a good memory… I'm going to remember this every time I see you with blonde hair, but it's just a cover. What's in here," and she leaned forward again and kissed his chest right over his heart, "that's what I love…" and she smiled softly before smirking, "but I have to say, the packing _is_ very nice."

"Thank you," Michael said, though he wasn't entirely sure of everything he was thanking her for, he was so utterly grateful to have her, to have this new life with her that he could never have imagined for himself, that he felt compelled to say it.

"Thank you for taking me to Paris," Fifi replied as she freed his wrist from their constraints. As soon as he was released, he took her in his arms and pulled her onto the bed with him, pouring all the love he felt into the embrace and the kiss. She was as breathless as he when he relinquished his hold on her.

"Can we finish breakfast now?" she asked with a bright smile.

"Was auch immer Sie wollen, Claudia, whatever you want. Frohe Weihnachten. "

"Comme il se doit, Helmet, as it should be. Joyeux Noel."


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:** _This is the seventh part of the 3.01 premiere AU that was originally posted as Chapter 20 in "Reconnecting."_

 _()()()()()()_

 **3.01 – The Enemy of My Enemy – Part 7**

 _An alternate for Season Three and beyond following on from_ _2.11 – Hot Spot_

 _()()()()()()_

 _Isla Mujeres, February 14, 2019_

"I will be looking you up the next time I'm in Miami…" the buxom blonde with a big smile said as she bussed his whiskery cheek.

"I'm counting on it," he answered, throwing an arm around her waist and kissing her on the mouth passionately before releasing her entirely.

"You're a devil, Mr. Finley," she declared, spinning out of his embrace after the younger man let her go and then sashaying down the wide concrete dock, leaving the cruise ship behind her as she made her way with the crowd towards Cozumel.

"You know it, baby," Sam Axe laughed as he joined the surge of people walking towards the popular Mexican port of call. A low chuckle greeted his ears as he walked toward a young man who was grinning at him broadly as he approached before wolf whistling at him.

"Look at you, JJ," he said to the muscular youth. "You've grown two feet since I saw you last."

"Ya haven't been gone that long, Mr. F," he replied, reaching out to take the small bag from the older man's grasp. Jojo's eldest son had gotten taller and filled out considerably from the gangly sixteen-year-old he had met when he'd first come to the home of his smuggler father.

"So, how's things…? You guys staying out of trouble?"

"Got a new girlfriend," Mr. Delaney announced with a hint of pride.

"It's the scar… Chicks dig scars," the former navy man assured him. JJ grinned in response, crinkling the slashes of pink that criss-crossed his dark skin on the side of his face where he had almost lost his eye at the hands of a merc who had kidnapped him at the behest of a rival.

Sam had to admit that he hadn't had much use for Fiona Glenanne or gun runners in general to begin with, but the insane Irishwoman had grown on him, as had the arms merchant's family.

But he hadn't really understood why Jojo had been so generous to his best friend, Michael Westen, and his crazy girlfriend when the duo had gone into hiding after the fire fight at sea which had freed him from the organization that had burned him. That is until he'd heard the tale from the victim himself of what that redheaded firecracker had been done to take him back from the killers who'd abducted him and almost killed him nearly ten years ago.

"Are Ria and Ricky packed up and ready to go?" he asked as they came to the smaller dock off the main egress from the cruise liners where the red and white 50' Marauder SS was tied up with two of the Delaney's most trusted bodyguards standing next to the bow and stern of the sleek cigarette boat. He nodded towards Jeniel and Shaunice as the ex-SEAL climbed abroad, wedging himself between the heavily muscled, deeply tanned men as JJ took the helm.

"Yea, it's all they've talked about for weeks. They can't wait to go to the aquarium."

The trip to the small private island off Isla Mujeres always seemed to go quickly despite the distance because Sam Axe was still had the heart of a squid and a love of the open ocean. Going upwards of 140 mph across the deep blue expanse, salt water spraying in his face, the former naval commander could not have been happier with the way his life was going right now.

He did the odd job here and there, sometimes with SEAL teammates like Virgil and Pete, and surprisingly he had managed to teach Nate Westen a thing or two about helping the other guy without an ulterior motive. He kept an eye on Madeline under the guise of giving her a helping hand with various home improvement projects and still had plenty of free time to romance the ladies and help his best buddy, who was allegedly dead, not only by tapping his vast network of contacts but by performing the occasional babysitting duty, which was actually his favorite one.

Sam was on his way to take the youngest two Delaney children on a field trip to Cancun with his _niece,_ Destiny Victoria Finley, along with Trini and a few obvious and not so obvious additions to their cadre of personal security guards. He wasn't sure what her parents were going to be up that the nine-year-old needed to go on a road trip with her uncle, but he usually didn't ask.

 _If it had been anyone but Michael Westen, then the fact that Valentine's Day was in a couple of days might have made Sam think that he had planned something romantic… But this was Mikey after all, so they probably had a job to do for Roger that required both of their attention. On the other hand, with what he knew about the pair of them, a job might be the best sweetheart gift available._

He chuckled to himself as the boat began to slow, approaching the secure dock that fronted the rocky island near the Delaney compound that his friends inhabited. The large boat eased itself into the natural opening in the rocky cliff face where a panel of bullet proof clear Lexan covered the metal pier that ran half the length of the opening. Sam stood up and waved, watching as one of the sections moved aside to admit him onto the dock. Stepping off the edge of the bobbing craft, the bearded man nodded to the passengers as he turned around on the decking.

"We'll be heading out early on Thursday, so pick us up around seven and say hi to your dad for me."

"Will do, Mr. F," JJ called as he put the boat in reverse and started to back away from the platform slowly so as not to splash water into the corridor Sam was retreating into.

Mr. Axe knew he was being monitored on a security feed; otherwise he wouldn't have been permitted entry on the dock to begin with. Approaching the heavy metal door set into the rock face, he pressed his palm onto the reader while presenting his eyeball to be scanned.

"Chuck Finley is forever," he intoned to the hidden speaker and then grinned at the camera he knew was sending images to the facial recognition software scanning over his features.

Finally, the door slide aside and he stepped into another corridor which led into the underground lobby below the main house. Several equally impressive slabs of steel covered entrances to other parts of the complex, including the building where Michael kept the intelligence gathering and monitoring center he used to ply his trade as an information broker and part-time operative.

"What took so long?" Sam asked as the elevator doors in front of him opened. "Don't tell me the beard messed up the program?" He paused as he realized he was talking to empty air where he expected his best friend to be.

"I was in the middle of something," a slender dark haired girl replied. Destiny Victoria was only half her dad's height, but every bit her father's daughter. Amused blue eyes sparkled before she launched herself at her uncle's waist, capturing the older man in a bear hug which he returned.

"How did you get here so fast?" she queried as they stepped into the cab before quickly keying a complicated sequence of numbers into a panel and the elevator began to ascend.

"You know JJ, showing off his dad's latest toy," Sam remarked, running a hand through his salt and pepper hair that was now more salt than pepper. "Surprised I've got any hair left on my head at all after that trip from Cozumel… So, what were you in the middle of, Dessie?"

"Helping Dad," she returned succinctly.

"Helping him with what?"

"It's complicated."

It amused the ex-SEAL endlessly that his daughter had picked up Michael's minimalist speech patterns and the spy's typical evasiveness at such a young age… although it made sense given her upbringing. "You'll have to give me a little more of a mission parameter if you want my help, missy," Sam said with a wink.

He could see it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she didn't need any help, but there was not a Westen yet he had met that was immune to the Sam Axe charm.

"Come on, I'll show you." She entered another series of codes into the keypad.

The pair exited the elevator underneath the outbuilding off the main house that nominally looked like a workshop but in truth contained the ex-government operative's operations center. Sam had, tongue in cheek, deliberately steered the design to look like something out of a James Bond movie or the Batcave… a chair centered in the middle of a console covered in monitors and data feeds with several keyboards arranged in a semi-circle in front of the main seat, a high backed swivel chair with thick padding on the arms, back and head rest. Destiny hopped up into it.

"I'm trying to figure out how many roses it will take to fill up— "

"Hold on a minute… _Your dad_ asked _you_ to order flowers?"

The girl rolled her eyes. "My Dad? Order flowers?"

"Point taken… so why are you trying to order up a bunch of flowers? Is there a funeral?"

She huffed. "Maybe. Mom told Dad that if he had to count on his in person skills in the field he wouldn't last ten seconds. You've already told me that Dad was the best at what he did in the field…" Her confusion was obvious. "But you also told me he could be pretty dumb sometimes."

"True, but I'm not sure I'm following you, Dessie."

"Remember you told me when you said you were coming this week that you were going to bring me a present for Valentine's Day cuz I was your best girl? Isn't Dad supposed to get Mom a present or something instead of a card? You told Dad he was hopeless at romance compared to-"

"I'm pretty sure you weren't supposed to hear that, Des…" Sam had the good grace to be embarrassed, though his new beard covered up most of the redness in his cheeks. He would have to remember to make sure his niece was not sitting right next to her father next time apparently.

"Yes, but Mom said that if he didn't get this right, she was going to make him pay -"

"Uh, Des, I'm pretty sure you weren't supposed to hear that either. Have you been spying on your parents too, young lady?"

"Spying on people who keep other people's secrets?" she countered, the picture of innocence. It almost scared the former military man how good she was at this stuff already. "I can't help it if I walk quietly," Destiny added defensively. "I'm trying to help him not mess up and make Mom mad. You know what Mom is like when she's mad. Are _you_ going to _help me_?"

If it was true that the old Sam Axe charm never failed on a Westen, it was also true that if there was one thing he was a sucker for, it was a Westen asking for his help.

"Okay, missy, what is it exactly you were trying to do again?"

 **()()()()()()()**

" _Then Fifi tells her to have fun and be careful and Des gets that look on her face, same one you used to, and she says, 'I'm always careful.' Man, I thought Fi was gonna choke, brother... We're all good here, Petey. You two enjoy your VD… Oh before I forget, we left Fifi a little surprise in the guest room."_

Peter Michael Finley, much like the man he used to be, was both relieved and worried, a condition he spent more of his life in than he cared to admit. He was glad to have his only child under the care of the former SEAL who had saved his life on more than one occasion as well as her companions' mother and personal body guards, happy that Destiny was able to have a vacation with children in her age range and as well as attending school with Jojo Delaney's offspring under her cover ID on Isla and pleased to have a job that allowing himself and his flame haired wife to remain _sort of_ in the business without getting shot at _every_ day.

And yet paradoxically, he was also worried about all those exact same things… that he couldn't take her anywhere out in public himself without the risk of being recognized outside of the tight knit smuggler community they lived in, that she required cover ID's and bodyguards in her everyday life, that he and Fiona sometimes still did dangerous things for work. Every aspect of his life was a balancing act between being who he was meant to be and making sure that his friends and family didn't suffer for it.

On the upside, it was now his decision which jobs were too dangerous or too political. He was no longer at the mercy of faceless bureaucrats deciding what was in their best interests instead of those of his countrymen. He'd done the US more than a few favors that they knew nothing about over the years. Best of all, he knew who he'd be working with, either Sam or Fiona depending on the job, as they were really the only operatives who knew he hadn't actually gone to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico along with Carla's people and Victor Steckler-Epps…

Of course, Management knew; however, in the last ten years since his showdown in a sleepy little Mexican town with the organization that had burned him, he hadn't had any trouble from them… _the fact that he might have pointed the leader of that other intelligence network that he had worked with on that particular rendezvous in Management's general direction might not have had anything at all to do with that…_

He smiled as he remembered Sam's call, via burner phone, to let him know that they had arrived safely at their destination. Destiny's continual head butting with her mother, which was getting worse as the girl got older, was a source of mostly amusement for him, although he would never let that become public knowledge, particularly if he wanted to keep all his limbs intact.

In any event, his child was off on vacation and he had the house and his wife all to himself, with the exception on the guard dog, Mac10, that Fiona's mother Maeve had insisted they needed to watch over her granddaughter and the pair of cats, Lane and Harris, who kept all the vermin on the island at a minimum. Not much of a pet person, he did appreciate that they did their duty.

Whether by subconscious design or happenstance, Michael Westen had rarely been around on the 14th of February and certainly not with the entire island to themselves. But there was a job to do over the weekend that required both of them, an extraction of a biological weapons designer and his spouse from a couples resort in Venezuela, and since Valentine's Day was the Thursday before, it certainly seemed like an opportunity to fully celebrate the day.

As his daughter had been participating in _El Día del Amor y la Amistad_ at school for the last four years, he hadn't had much of an excuse on the date; however, work always seemed to coincide with that date and he had tried to make up for that with appropriate flowers and erotic massages.

His plans for this year hadn't changed. He was just going to do it on the actual day, tell her they had job in an increasingly dangerous country at a five-star resort and let nature take its course.

Michael put some food in the cat's bowls before he exited the out building that doubled for his work shop above ground, having retrieved the large bouquet of a dozen long stemmed roses surrounded by a cloud of baby's breath from the back of the large drink refrigerator within.

While it wasn't from the most expensive florist in Belfast, it was from the nicest floral shop on Isla Mujeres. He had gotten her flowers for the first time twenty-one years ago today… _He had just discovered that she was really working undercover for the PIRA, actually on the same mission he'd been sent by the CIA at the behest of MI6: to neutralize the Real IRA._

 _After he'd helped her sabotage the weapons in Derry, he'd left her just outside of Belfast to deliver the damaged goods on her own. He'd felt bad about that, but he didn't dare go with her. Not only couldn't he risk being seen or associated with the defective merchandise as McBride, the spy needed to get the information he discovered to his handlers immediately._

 _By Saturday, Valentine's Day 1998, he'd gotten everything into place, including permission to now pursue Fiona Glenanne as his primary asset instead of working on her brother, Sean. After their trip to Derry, the idea of romancing his target had seemed like a brilliant strategy._

Destiny's dog acknowledged his master's entrance in the main house with a wag of his tail and a yawn. Michael chuckled nervously as he approached the guest room at the far end of the large sprawling hacienda-style abode. He knew now that he had already started to fall in love with the flame haired Irishwoman, but at the time his head told him that she was the perfect choice to complete the mission and he certainly wasn't going to object if that meant spending time in her bed. It was one of the reasons that although he had brought her flowers, they were never roses.

The only other time he'd bought her roses was in apology for ignoring her after they had slept together for the first time at the loft once Jason Bly had handed him his burn notice dossier. The former agent took just a moment to feel ashamed of himself for how he had treated the mother of his child very early on in their relationship and decided that feeling probably had something to do with him not actually managing to be home on this particular date for the last ten or so years.

The ex-government spy wasn't too alarmed that his navy buddy friend had claimed to have left something behind in the room the ex-SEAL always used whenever he made one of his infrequent but always welcome visits. He was more worried about taking Sam up on his suggestion that his bride would really appreciate some roses. The red blossoms had significance for him they obviously lacked for the other man. However, he was planning on discovering what the 'surprise' awaited his wife before he went to presented his flowers to her and lost track of everything else.

Slowly opening the door, Michael peered into the darkened room, wondering why the lights were so low. The next thing that caught his attention was the sweet smell of roses, a far stronger aroma than what was coming from the large bouquet right under his nose. With his curiosity piqued, he cautiously stepped fully inside only to stop short just over the threshold.

There were by rough estimation twenty vases of all shapes and designs full of what he assumed were a dozen long stemmed roses in each placed in various strategic points around the space and for a brief couple of seconds he remained frozen to the spot... What the hell had Sam been thinking? He swallowed thickly. This was either going to go very good or very, very badly…

Which was naturally the precise moment his beloved chose to silently come up and wrap her arms around his waist from behind, her warm breath on his neck causing him to startle…

"I have ta admit ya surprised me, Michael," she purred in her native accent and then nuzzled the back of his neck before her teeth sought out and found his earlobe. "Ya certainly know how ta make fer lost time."

As a spy trained to maximize every opportunity, former CIA Agent Westen was not about to not take credit for something that had clearly pleased his beloved even though he had no freaking idea what the hell was going on. He was happy for the moment that she had come up behind him and he had a chance to get his expression under control and wipe the look of shock off his face.

 _To be a spy, you need physical fitness, a facility with languages, a tolerance for exotic foods, and the bugs that come with them. But ultimately, there's no greater qualification than the ability to think fast on your feet and when your best friend throws you a curve ball, you need to have the quick reflexes to run with it._

It was a mystery why Sam Axe had chosen to help him out in the romance department, which his brother in arms had been teasing him about extensively over the last week ever since he had asked the older man to escort Dessie on vacation while they were on job, but it was a question he was happy to leave unsolved for now… Especially as his beloved's hands were no longer linked about his waist, but rather were tugging impatiently at his shirt.

Another thing he'd learned in spy school was to focus on the immediate threat… His smile widened as he realized his good fortune. _Or take advantage of an opportunity…._

"I take it you approve?" he asked, although the query was largely redundant as her body language said quite clearly she was pleased, for which he was totally grateful. Fiona hummed a positive affirmative as her hands, which had finally wrenched his shirt hem free from his pants, began to wander over his toned stomach and muscular chest.

"Do ya have ta ask…? Tis been a long time since ya brought me roses, Michael." She slipped around in front of him as she spoke, her fingers gliding up and down his torso before taking a firm hold of the waistband of his pants. "Come wit' me, I have sommit fer ya thot needs unwrapping."

As she led him the few short steps across the dimly lit room to the guest bed, his eyes swept over the woman he loved, noting the untidy bun holding most of her hair out of the way and the figure skimming white kimono, which did nothing to hide the fact she was naked underneath before lasering in on something else over her shoulder: strips of white silk hanging from the head board.

The kimono, the ties... Like their trip to Paris just over two years ago for his fiftieth birthday, a mix of business and pleasure at which his wife excelled at that had turned out very pleasurable indeed. A successful job followed by a near re-run of an earlier Paris assignment where Helmut Hermann had woken up naked and tied spread eagle to the bed by his beautiful wife Claudia.

"I thought about ambushing ya as soon as ya opened tha door." his lover informed him as she sat down on the foot of the bed. "O' ripping yar clothes off ya whilst wrestlin' ya ta tha floor… And then after I had wrestled you into submission… I thought about tying you down to the bed and drizzling warm chocolate all over every…. Single... Inch… of you before having my wicked way with you..."

He gulped and swallowed deeply, his mind filling with thoughts brought to life by his wild woman's words and all of a sudden he felt very, very hot.

 _At least the second time she'd asked before whipping out the silk ties._ His gaze flickered over to where a bowl was sitting on a tripod over a trio of tea light candles.

"Or do ya have sommit different in mind, Mr. Finley?" She raised an eyebrow.

The sensual undertone in her softly spoken question caused a shiver to run down his back as blood rushed to another part of his anatomy.

"Er, um, that sounds good to me... I was thinking of something a little different." His eyes darted to the en-suite. "I know how much you like to soak, I thought -"

She stopped his words by abruptly getting to her feet. They were so close the knot on the belt of her robe pressed against the front of his jeans.

"Why dontcha unwrap your present and we'll see where things go from there?" Fiona challenged.

"I'd love to."

He smiled and looked deeply into her eyes, letting the bouquet drop gently onto the edge of the bed, before gently cradling her cheeks between his calloused palms.

"You know, there is a certain beauty in occasionally taking things a little bit slower," he said.

Michael tenderly stroked his fingers up through her hairline and then pulled the pins out of her hair so the long auburn locks fell tousled about her shoulders. "After all, we have the whole island to ourselves and there is no risk of anyone spying on us."

He trailed his hands down her arms, to her waist… with one quick tug the thin belt holding her robe closed fell to the floor and with a small shrug of her shoulders, the fine Chinese silk garment joined it on the carpet.

For a moment all he could do was stare. It didn't matter that he saw Fiona's slender naked frame every day when he awoke in the morning. She always and forever would have the ability to take his breath away.

"You're beautiful, Fi." He drew her into his arms, his lips seeking out hers in a deep kiss as he sought to show her how much he loved her.

"Happy Valentine's, Michael," she whispered as they drew apart.

"Same to you."

He gave her a light push, aiming to drop her down on the bed and then pin her down with his bodyweight; however, it seemed the auburn haired vixen had other ideas as she resisted, her body stiffening when she pushed him away.

"Fi?"

"You're the one who wanted to go slower." Her smile took the sting out of her words and she surprised him yet again by dropping onto the bed and shuffling backwards until she was sitting with her back on the pillows. "Strip for me, Michael."

"Excuse me?"

"I want you to strip for me. I don't expect anything Chippendales, but I want you to strip for me."

"I -" The words of protest dried in his throat as she continued to stare. He was fifty-two years old and blushing like a school kid on a first date as he carefully unbuttoned his shirt.

It was very disconcerting, stripping off before his wife of close to a decade. There was something about the way she was watching him, her blue-green eyes skimming over each bit of flesh as his clothing fell away.

But, as uncomfortable as he felt, there was also something very arousing about it too, about the way the slender redhead remained totally still, only the deep rise and fall of her chest revealing the effect he was having on her.

Finally, Michael stood at the end of the bed, his eyes devouring every inch of the equally naked woman before him, who in turn was staring back at him as if he was some tasty morsel she was just waiting to take a bite out of. He shuddered slightly, as his manhood twitched in anticipation. _Fiona did like to bite... Among other things..._

Kneeling on the edge of the bed, the dark haired man began to crawl up the mattress when she raised a foot to his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.

"Fi…?" From out of nowhere, he felt a hint of apprehension. There was something about her expression which he hadn't seen before.

"You surprised the hell outta me with' all this, Michael." She gestured with a quick look around the flower-filled room before turning her attention back to him. "I didn't think you had it in you... So, I thought about changing things up too, just a bit."

"I'm happy with…"

He forgot what he was about to say as with a look of determination, the beautiful flame haired woman before him raised her arms, slipped her hands through the loops in the silk ties and pulled them tight about her wrists.

"There, I'm all yours. Do with me what you will."

"Fi…" He was an experienced operative, had worked on three continents, faced death daily…

Michael was totally at a loss for words.

He didn't know what had happened to her in her past. She'd refused to give him even the briefest of details after he had taken a beating while trying to awaken her from a nightmare which had had her screaming and crying out loud enough to wake the neighbors… But it didn't take a genius to guess the likely event based on the few words he'd managed to discern at the time.

"You don't have to do this."

He loved her wildness in the bedroom, her aggression a massive turn on. She had been right all those years ago when she had reminded him that violence was foreplay for him too.

"I've already told you I want to. Now, what are you going to do with me?"

He moved slowly, almost hesitantly. Wrapping his hands about her feet, running his thumbs over her soles watching as the sensation caused her toes to curl. Toes which moments later he was sucking on as his hands moved up to her calves, running his palms over the soft sleek skin, massaging the hard tight muscles underneath until they were soft and pliant to his touch.

Where his hands went, his lips, tongue and teeth followed. Kissing, licking and nipping their way up her long lean limbs, which writhed and twisted in his grip, her moans, sighs and the occasional cuss words were like music to his ears.

It was as his nose brushed against the narrow 'landing strip' of light brown curls at the apex of those legs when he stopped and looked up, his eyes alighting on the bowl of warm chocolate on the small bedside table.

Scooting up the bed, he ignored her disappointed call 'to get back there' to lift the bowl off the tripod and away from the heat.

"Michael?"

"You mentioned drizzling chocolate all over me." He smiled down at her and dipped one finger into the thick dark liquid, testing the temperature before smearing a thin line over her lips.

He leaned forward and took a taste. "Dark chocolate, you remembered..."

Taking his time, he poured a thin line of the sweet and bitter substance from the hollow of her throat, between her breasts, over her stomach down to her pubic bone before using a finger to draw a circle over the darkened skin around each of her pebble hard nipples.

Standing upright, he placed the bowl down, blew out the tea lights and then turned all his attention back on to the woman he loved as he began to lick… Every... Single... Inch of her…

Starting at her neck, he worked his way down, his hands gliding over skin as his mouth left no part of her untouched. Dipping his fingers into the chocolate again, he gave special attention to the peaks of those small soft pliant mounts before circling back to that oh-so-special spot.

"Mi – Mi – Mich – e-al... Oh – Oh – –" Fiona's lithe supple body writhed as she gasped his name, her sweet sweat mingled with the after taste of the last of the chocolate. Rising up again, he looked down at the woman he loved and, seeing her chest heave and her fingers clutch uselessly at the air, all of a sudden he felt a wave of longing crash down over him.

 _This isn't what he wanted..._ He missed her razor sharp fingernails dragging over his skin, her strong fingers gripping his hair so tight he sometimes feared that at some point he was going to end up bald. He even missed her teeth latching onto his ears or throat and in the throes of passion, cracked ribs from the hold of her powerful legs. His Fiona shouldn't be tied up and even if she had done it to herself, Michael suddenly couldn't stand it another second.

Lightning fast, he reached past her to the knife hidden between the mattress and the headboard, cutting her free and then dropping the blade to the floor. The dark haired man brushed his lips over both her wrists, attempting to soothe away the striations on her skin before touching them tenderly on her forehead.

"Mi— Mi—Michael…?" his lover panted.

"Not you," he muttered low and then his mouth sealed over hers, the kiss had such passion and urgency that it took the rest of her breath away.

He rolled them over until she was lying on top of him, his large hands caressing her spine from the back of her head to her bottom while he placed butterfly kisses to her face, neck and shoulder. Recovering some of her senses, Fiona's threaded her fingers through his hair, her nails scraping over his scalp and sending chills through his frame again as her skin slide against his.

Now she was kissing him back, hard and demanding, her tongue pushing past his teeth and commanding his surrender. He squeezed her backside and attempted to pull her towards his awaiting erection, but she resisted. With her long hair cascading around him, she sat up slightly.

Her eyes held a question he was incapable of answering for just a moment before she reached over to dip her fingertips into the cooling confection and then she drew a large heart on his chest. Smiling broadly, she licked from the bottom point just above his navel, around his ribs and Michael moaned as his lover paused to give extra attention to his nipples and then down again.

"Fi…" he said, his voice full of adoration with just a note of pleading.

"You wanted to take this slow, remember?" and her hands ran over him, squeezing and stroking as she kissed and nipped her way back up his body before settling on his neck and now he was the one writhing under her ministrations as her lower half rubbed over him in all the right ways.

Her grin was wicked when she finally settled onto him, pulling a groan from deep within his chest as she encompassed him fully and then she was riding him hard, her small breasts bouncing to the rhythm of her movement, grinding their pelvic bones together with each down stroke.

Michael came in a rush and lost sight of his beautiful vixen sitting triumphantly astride him as his vision whited out for a few seconds and then she collapsed over him, those muscles reserved for only him rippling against his manhood as her own passion reached its peak.

For a long time, there was only the sound of their labored breathing as they held each other close.

"I think we need that bath you mentioned now…" she whispered against his neck.

"Please…"

And later, after he had been enjoying the feel of the steaming water with the woman he loved settled in his arms, her back against his chest, her soaked auburn locks floating about his forearms, the redhead asked her husband what had upset him so and Michael found himself unable to immediately articulate exactly what about it had driven him to act the way he had…

It was more than not wanting a passive partner. He had figured that out seeing Fiona and Samantha standing side by side and trading barbs over the breakfast bar back at the loft years ago, even though at the time he was engaged to the brunette, he'd thought being so completely in control of the relationship was what he had wanted.

But then he had met Fiona Glenanne and she was so different... And that was what it was… seeing her like that… it violated the essence of her, even if it had been voluntary on Fiona's part.

"It's not who you are…" was all he could or would say on the matter.

But soon enough, his stomach rumbled and they agreed that since they had the house to themselves that they would finish the chocolate after dinner, so there was no need to get dressed again beyond putting enough terry cloth over their bodies so as not to drip on the tiles.

 **()()()()()()()**

It had been Brandon Jensen travel writer and idle rich guy who, along with his beautiful wife Christina, had gotten off the plane in Mexico City and then, after strolling confidently through customs and immigration, had taken a small private transport back to Cancun and followed by a boat ride to Isla Mujeres. Senor Jensen was a happy man. The job had gone well...

Actually, more like it had ended well after a few minor problems. A fist fight in a sauna while wearing nothing but a towel and then losing said towel in the midst of the brawl for him and a dip in the Puerta de la Cruz Harbor followed by a motorcycle chase under fire for her.

Rescuing his beloved from being trapped in a rundown equipment shed with the frightened little bunny of a wife of his target and the resulting firefight had been another of the highlights of the trip along with the moment they had finally handed Kevin and Nikki Skylar over to an armed escort waiting to deliver them into the hands of a CIA interrogation team and then the Jensens had headed back to their hotel room to pack.

He had barely made it through the door when his wife had slammed him hard up against that wooden barrier, crawling up his body thoroughly wetting his own clothes with her damp garments before half ripping them off him. He had been in the process of taking her right there against the wall of the suite when there was a knock at the door that caused him to both freeze.

He told the bellhop in a somewhat strangled voice that they would bring their own bags down in a minute and then they both collapsed against one another laughing like idiots. As it turned out he ended up pinning her against the slick tiles of the shower stall instead, her legs wrapped around his waist and her arms around his neck as he slid into her, an amazing flurry of entangled limbs, bites, nips and kisses as they took each other to paradise.

But as utterly incredible as everything had been on their mission and before they'd even left, there was something even better awaiting him back on that private island in the Gulf of Mexico.

Because it was Daddy who got down on one knee and enfolded his daughter in a huge bear hug when she ran into the living room and straight into his arms, having returned from her trip with her uncle and best friends… They chatted for a minute before she went off with her mother to sort out her things and no doubt tease and annoy each other massively in the process.

It was Peter Michael Finley who sat in his kitchen with his older brother Chuck drinking a couple of cervezes while in the background they listened to the two women in his life discussing rather loudly the state of young Miss Finley's best shoes.

"Beer already…? You must've had quite the week without me." Sam laughed. "I take it the roses worked out pretty well."

"Yeah about that," Michael replied. "What made you think I needed enough the flowers to cover my own funeral? Or was that just in case she killed me anyway?"

That made Mr. Axe laugh even harder. "That wasn't me, brother. I just helped plan the logistics of the operation."

Then the dark-haired man remembered that his friend had said 'we' left a surprise. The incredulous look on his face must've said it all.

"Yep, it was Dessie's idea. I guess she overheard me telling you about not messing up with FiFi on Thursday and she decided dear old dad needed some help. By the way, Petey, you need to be a little more careful around her now. The girl's a lot sharper than you think she is."

"Apparently so," he mumbled, lost in thought for a moment. "So, what made her decide on roses?"

"I think she got into your browser history and looked up what you had ordered from the florist. Smart of you to take up my suggestion, but not so smart to let your daughter figure out your password."

At that moment, the object of their discussion walked into the room.

"Thanks again, Uncle Chuck," she said, smiling at the older man. "I had a great time."

"Uncle Chuck has just been telling me all about it, Dessie. Are you all unpacked now?" her father asked. It amused him that his little _mini me_ as Sam called her had picked up so many of his habits and routines.

"Gear stowed and laundry commenced?" the other man asked.

"Ah-hah, all done," Destiny agreed.

"Well, then, Uncle Chuck is going to leave you two to talk while he goes to see how long it takes to aggravate your mom. Nobody's hit me in almost a week. I'm feeling deprived."

Left alone, Michael turned to his daughter and smiled softly. "Thank you," he said simply as his seemingly not so little girl took the seat that her uncle had just vacated.

His dark hair daughter cocked her head, her curiosity evident. "For what?"

Part of him thought about thanking her for bringing such light into his life, but since she was very much like him he knew it would only embarrass her.

"For helping me with your mom's Valentine's Day present."

Destiny flushed with pride at the compliment and ducked her head.

" _But_ , I have a feeling I'm not going to be thanking you quite so much when I get a look at my credit card bill."

"Uncle Chuck paid for some of them," she defended. "And Jeniel, JJ and Elena helped to go pick them up, so there was no delivery fee and nobody without proper security clearance got access to the house."

Michael wasn't sure whether to be proud or appalled that his child could parrot his procedures so successfully. In the end, he decided it was a little bit of both.

"Okay, so in the interest of closing the security breach, exactly how did you get my password?"

She bit her upper lip. The gesture was so familiar that it almost made him laugh. "Well, it's not something anyone else could have done."

This time he did laugh out loud at her evasiveness. "Then, just tell me to set my mind at ease."

As it appeared her father wasn't angry at her, it encouraged Destiny to speak.

"Umm, you know that program you put on, so like during an emergency, if anyone got in here you could find out if they got on your computer and what they did... I sort of figured out how to turn that on, and last time you logged in you must have forgotten to log out all the way when you were done... So, er, it was open sort of... I didn't think you would mind if it was to make mommy happy."

Michael was momentarily speechless. _Sam was right. She was a lot smarter than he had giving her credit for._

"I just wanted to help you," she blurted out when her father didn't immediately respond. "I don't like it when mom is mad at you."

The dark-haired man who looked so much like the little girl sitting across from him stood up and drew her into his arms for a hug before planting a kiss on the top of her head.

"You did help, honey," he told her. "More than you'll ever know. I'm very proud of you, Destiny."

He rubbed her back and then took a step back. "Let's go. I think I need you to help me plug some holes in my security. Come on, Mac," he called to the dog that was watching from the corner.

And they walked out of the house to the out-building where the former American operative had spent so much time with his daughter in the bunker below, were greeted by the two felines who were always looking for a snack and followed by their ever loyal Belgium Shepherd. For a man who had never thought of anything other than the solitary life of a spy in service of his country, having a family that included dogs, cats and computer hacking children was more than Michael Westen could have imagined and better than he had ever dreamed of.


End file.
